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THE    INSPIRATION    OF    POETRY 

EIGHT   LECTURES  ON  POETIC  ENERGY 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  LOWELL 

INSTITUTE  OF  BOSTON,  1906 


•Th 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd 

TORONTO 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF 
POETRY 


BY 

GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1910 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYKIGHT,   1910, 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  1910. 


Nortoooo  $reaa 

J.  B.  Cushing  Co.  — Berwick  <fe  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


.  ■ 


hi 


CONTENTS 


I.  Poetic  Madness 

II.  Marlowe 

III.  Camoens 

IV.  Byron  . 
V.  Gray     . 

VI.  Tasso    . 

VII.  Lucretius 

VIII.  Inspiration 


FAGE 

1 

29 
58 
85 
113 
142 
172 
203 


4 


i«S>t 


THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 


POETIC   MADNESS 

Through  all  the  space  of  years,  from  the 
morning  of  the  world  almost  till  yesterday, 
the  poets  were  a  race  apart;  mortal,  they 
yet  shed  a  celestial  gleam;  dying,  they  re- 
mained deathless;  more  than  any  other  class 
of  men  they  typified  immortality.  The 
Greeks,  those  originators  of  the  intellectual 
life,  fixed  for  us  the  idea  of  the  poet.  He  was 
a  divine  man;  more  sacred  than  the  priest, 
who  was  at  best  an  intermediary  between 
men  and  the  gods,  but  in  the  poet  the  god 
was  present  and  spoke.  "For,"  said  Soc- 
rates to  Ion,  "not  by  art  does  the  poet  sing, 
but  by  power  divine.  .  .  .  God  takes  away 
the  minds  of  poets  and  uses  them  as  His 
ministers,  as  He  also  uses  diviners  and  holy 
prophets,  in  order  that  we  who  hear  them 
may  know  them  to  be  speaking  not  of  them- 


2  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

selves  who  utter  these  priceless  words  in  a 
state  of  unconsciousness,  but  that  God  Him- 
self is  the  speaker,  and  that  through  them  He 
is  conversing  with  us."  The  poets  them- 
selves give  the  same  testimony.  Spenser 
says  that  poetry  is  "no  art,  but  a  divine  gift 
and  heavenly  instinct,  not  to  be  gotten  by 
labour  and  learning,  but  adorned  with  both; 
and  poured  into  the  witte  by  a  certaine  En- 
thousiasmos  and  celestiall  inspiration;"  Shel- 
ley has  the  same  doctrine  in  mind  when 
he  says,  "Poetry  redeems  from  decay  the 
visitations  of  the  divinity  in  man."  Poetic 
energy,  according  to  this  view,  is  inspiration, 
anciently  conceived  as  a  madness  taking  pos- 
session of  the  poet,  and  in  more  modern  times 
as  a  divine  prompting  of  the  reasonable 
soul.  This  is  the  unbroken  tradition  of  lit- 
erature from  the  beginning  with  respect  to 
the  nature  of  poetic  power. 

It  is  to  be  feared,  however,  that  this  doc- 
trine to-day  has  little  convincing  force. 
Even  in  the  words  of  Socrates  there  is  a  sus- 
picion of  irony,  and  perhaps  Spenser  and 
Shelley  put  more  faith  in  their  own  words  than 
ever   their   readers   have   done.     Yet   when 


POETIC  MADNESS  3 

all  reservations  have  been  made,  there  remain 
in  the  thoughts  of  all  of  us  respecting  poetry- 
some  glimmerings  and  decays,  at  least,  of  the 
idea  of  inspiration.  It  is  the  vogue  nowa- 
days, when  any  question  is  asked  with  regard 
to  the  soul,  to  apply  first  to  the  anthropolo- 
gist; and,  indeed,  to  inquire  concerning  the 
history  of  an  idea  is  one  of  the  best  means 
to  inform  ourselves  of  its  meaning.  It 
might  be  pleasant  to  enter  the  charmed  circle 
of  the  Greek  myth,  to  listen  for  snatches 
of  Lityerses'  song  like  music  before  dawn, 
and  have  sight  of  Orpheus,  a  shining  figure 
on  the  border  of  the  morning;  but  such  a 
procedure  would  only  discredit  our  argument. 
It  isjiecessary  to  go  to  the  anthropologist 
and  be  wise. 

What  does  the  student  of  primitive  man 
tell  of  poetry  at  her  birth?  In  place  of  the 
divine  child,  upon  whose  mouth  bees  clung 
in  the  cradle,  what  does  the  anthropologist 
show  us?  He  shows  us  the  dancing  horde. 
"On  festal  occasions,"  says  a  recent  writer, 
"the  whole  horde  meets  by  night  round  the 
camp-fire  for  a  dance.  Men  and  women 
alternating  form  a  circle;    each  dancer  lays 


4  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

his  arms  about  the  necks  of  his  two  neigh- 
bors, and  the  entire  ring  begins  to  turn  to  the 
right  or  to  the  left,  while  all  the  dancers 
stamp  strongly  and  in  rhythm  the  foot  that  is 
advanced,  and  drag  after  it  the  other  foot. 
Now  with  drooping  heads  they  press  closer 
and  closer  together;  now  they  widen  the 
circle.  Throughout  the  dance  resounds  a 
monotonous  song."  The  song  is  sometimes 
one  sound  interminably  repeated;  sometimes 
it  is  more  extended,  as,  for  example,  the 
words  "Good  hunting,"  or  "Now  we  have 
something  to  eat,"  or  "Brandy  is  good." 
In  that  undifferentiated,  homogeneous  social 
state  called  the  horde,  there  was  no  poet, 
just  as  there  were  no  other  men  with  particu- 
lar callings;  but  all  the  horde  were  poets; 
and  this,  which  I  have  read,  was  their  poetry. 
Such  is  the  anthropologist's  account,  and 
it  is  a  true  account.  Indeed,  it  is  plain  from 
the  evidence  that  primitive  men  found  many 
utilities  in  rhythmical  expression.  Rhythm 
was  used  to  mark  time  in  joint  labor  and  on 
the  march,  as  it  is  still  employed  by  sailors, 
boatmen,  and  soldiers ;  the  songs  of  labor  and 
of  war  have  this  origin;  and  in  that  primeval 


POETIC  MADNESS  5 

time,  when  language  was  hardly  formed  upon 
the  lips  of  men,  rhythm  was  the  means  by 
which  the  joint  expression  of  emotion  was 
effected  on  festive  occasions.  Rhythm  was, 
so  far  as  expression  was  concerned,  the 
social  bond.  Lying  on  the  sands  at  the  base 
of  the  pyramids,  or  amid  the  ruins  of  Luxor, 
as  the  afternoon  wore  on,  I  have  heard  the 
chant  begin  among  the  throng  of  workmen, 
and  as  they  hurried  by  with  their  baskets 
of  earth  it  was  no  fancy  for  me  to  believe  that 
in  their  shrill,  unceasing,  and  ever  louder  cry 
I  listened  to  the  cradle  hymn  of  poetry. 

If  one  looks  at  the  matter  more  closely, 
the  seeming  gap  between  these  sharply  op- 
posed conceptions  of  the  divine  poet  and 
the  singing  and  dancing  horde  begins  to  dis- 
appear. Greek  tradition  itself  gives  the  clew 
to  their  reconciliation.  Socrates,  in  the 
passage  which  I  have  quoted,  compares  the 
poet  to  the  wild  Bacchic  revellers  in  their 
frenzy,  —  that  is,  to  what  is  no  more  nor 
less  than  the  singing  horde  of  Dionysus  in 
their  sacred  orgy.  The  history  of  the  Greek 
stage  shows  clearly  how  tragedy  was  devel- 
oped from  an  original  joint  exercise  about 


6  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

the  altar  of  Dionysus,  in  which  all  united; 
it  was  only  by  the  gradual  change  of  time  that 
the  assembly  fell  apart  into  the  audience  on 
one  side  and  the  performers  on  the  other, 
and  even  then,  you  know,  the  chorus  re- 
mained as  the  delegate  of  the  whole  assembly 
until  in  turn  it  also  yielded  to  the  ever  increas- 
ing function  of  the  actors,  and  theatrical 
individuality  in  dramatic  performances  was 
fully  developed.  Without  entering  upon 
detail,  the  Greek  tradition  indicates  the  evo- 
lution of  poetry  from  its  social  form  as  the 
joint  rhythm  of  the  horde  to  its  individual 
form  as  the  song  of  the  divine  poet  who  held 
all  others  silent  when  he  discoursed.  In  this 
evolution  the  poetic  energy  itself  remains  the 
same,  however  much  its  form  may  change; 
whatever  explanation  may  be  given,  whether 
it  be  regarded  as  divine  or  human,  the  phe- 
nomenon is  continuous  and  identical. 

The  first  radical  trait  of  poetry  throughout 
is  the  presence  of  emotion;  and  this  to  so 
marked  a  degree  that  it  is  characteristically 
described  as  madness.  Civilized  men  some- 
times forget  the  immense  sphere  of  emo- 
tion in  the  history  of  the  race.     It  is  still 


POETIC  MADNESS  7 

familiar  to  us  in  the  actions  of  mobs,  in  the 
blind  fury  or  blind  panic  to  which  swarms 
of  men  are  subject.  In  history  we  read  of 
such  emotion  seizing  on  the  people  as  in  the 
time  of  the  Flagellants,  who  went  about 
scourging  themselves  in  the  streets,  or  generally 
in  periods  of  revolutionary  enthusiasm.  Such 
emotion  is  known  to  us,  also,  in  orgiastic  or  de- 
votional dances,  in  the  old-fashioned  revivals, 
and  in  the  fury  of  battle  that  possesses  every 
nation  when  its  chiefs  have  declared  war. 
This  is  the  broad  emotional  power  in  the 
race  that  is  the  fountain  of  poetry.  Emotion 
is  far  older  than  intellect  in  human  life; 
and  even  now  reason  plays  but  a  faint  and 
faltering  part  in  human  affairs.  If  in  the 
civilized  portions  of  the  world  the  ungoverned 
outburst  is  less  than  it  was,  or  seems  less,  it  is 
mainly  because  in  civilization  emotion  has 
found  fixed  channels. 

This  emotion,  which  is  the  fountain  of 
poetry,  it  should  be  observed,is  the  broad  fund 
of  life;  it  is  nothing  individual;  it  is  always 
shared  emotion.  The  second  radical  trait  of 
poetic  energy,  therefore,  is  that  it  is  social 
The  poet,  however  aloof  he  may  be,  is  always 


8  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

in  company  with  the  hearts  that  beat  with 
his  own  heart,  and  like  Saadi  — 

"He  wants  them  all, 
Nor  can  dispense 
With  Persia  for  his  audience : " 

for  he  is  the  voice  of  his  people.  In  times 
past,  and  on  the  great  scale  of  literary  history, 
this  is  evident ;  nor  is  it  less  true  of  the  most 
solitary  lyrical  poet  of  modern  days  than  of 
the  old  dramatist  or  epic  bard ;  for  even  that 
most  secretive  poetry,  which  we  fitly  say  is 
"overheard,"  has  its  value  in  proportion  to  its 
being  overheard  by  the  like-minded,  whose 
minds  it  fills.  The  third  trait  of  poetic  energy, 
as  seen  in  its  continuous  phenomena,  is  that  it 
is  controlled  emotion.  Rhythm  is  used  from 
the  beginning  to  control  movement,  as  when 
two  men  strike  alternately  in  a  common  work; 
or,  as  when  rowers  dip  their  oars  together;  or, 
as  when  the  throng  dances  in  chorus;  and 
at  the  same  time  it  governs  the  unisons  of 
the  emotional  cries.  Rhythm  is  the  germ  of 
art,  its  simplest  form;  and  poetic  art  as 
distinguished  from  poetic  energy  may  be 
defined  as  the  principle  of  control  in  the  emo- 


POETIC  MADNESS  9 

tion  in  play.  Poetic  energy,  then,  as  it  ap- 
pears historically,  is  shared  and  controlled 
emotion;  it  is  primordial  energy  rising  out 
of  the  vague  of  feeling;  it  is  social;  and  for 
the  principle  of  its  control  in  general  there  is 
no  better  word  than  music,  or  harmony  in  the 
old,  broad  sense  of  that  term. 

It  is  one  of  the  difficulties,  I  fancy,  of  the 
staid  New  England  folk  who  sit  at  the  feet  of 
Emerson,  to  find  the  sage  affirming  that  the 
perfect  state  of  life  is  ecstasy.     From  the 
beginning  to  the  end  he  repeatedly  announced 
this  law;   and  by  ecstasy  he  meant  precisely 
what  the  Greeks  meant  by  poe'-c  madness. 
In  his  essay  on  poetry  he  puts  his  finger 
on    the    ailing    place   when  he    says    that 
American   poetry  lacks  abandonment,  and 
he  extends  the    diagnosis    to   all  American 
life  when  he  exclaims  :  "O  celestial  Bacchus! 
drive  them  mad,  —  this  multitude  of  vaga- 
bonds,   hungry   for   eloquence,    hungry   for 
poetry,  starving  for  symbols,  perishing  for 
want  of  electricity  to  vitalize  this  too  much 
pasture,  and  in  the  long  delay  indemnifying 
themselves  with  the  false  wine  of  alcohol,  of 
politics,  or  of  money."     In  many  passages 


10  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

Emerson  thus  pleads  for  the  principle  of  the 
dervish,  the  maenad,  the  god-intoxicated 
man,  in  whatever  sphere  of  life;  the  man 
who  is  self-abandoned  to  the  energy  of  life 
that  wells  up  within  him,  and  in  being 
"passion's  slave"  finds  his  illumination 
and  his  enfranchisement. 

I  know  that  it  is  common  when  the  masters 
give  expression  to  such  bewildering  ideas  to 
say  that  they  did  not  mean  what  they  said, 
and  to  explain  away  the  words  by  a  liberal 
application  of  common  sense.  But  it  is 
more  likely  that  the  masters  do  not  say 
half  what  they  mean;  for  in  such  souls, 
living  in  a  white  heat  of  conviction,  expres- 
sion lags  far  behind  their  faith.  It  is  but 
just  to  Emerson,  however,  to  add  that  he 
had  adopted  the  idea  from  others,  and  he 
naively  remarks  that  it  is  singular  that  our 
faith  in  ecstasy  exists  in  spite  of  our  almost 
total  inexperience  of  it.  The  doctrine  itself, 
nevertheless,  is  one  of  the  most  persistent 
of  human  beliefs,  and  is  always  springing  up 
in  some  quarter  of  the  world. 

We  have  to  do  only  with  the  fact  that  from 
the  beginning  to  a  late  period  of  civilization 


POETIC  MADNESS  11 

poetic  genius  was  identified  with  a  certain 
madness.  The  poet  was  the  heir  of  the  wild 
and  frenzied  bands  of  Dionysus.  In  this 
case,  however,  the  madness  is  slowly  qualified. 
Whether  poetic  ecstasy  is  divinely  inspired, 
whether  it  be  the  most  perfect  state  of  life, 
or  whether  it  is  only  a  survival  from  that 
period  of  exaltation  which  may  have  ac- 
companied man's  escape  from  brutish  life,  is 
not  at  present  the  question.  It  is  not 
characterized  by  an  unbalanced  or  diseased 
reason  or  by  any  temporary  fury  and  aberra- 
tion; it  is  characterized  rather  by  a  suspen- 
sion of  reason.  The  plain  truth  appears  to 
be  no  more  than  that,  in  proportion  to  the 
degree  of  emotional  excitement,  the  opera- 
tion of  the  mind  tends  to  become  instinctive, 
and  in  the  crisis  of  passion  becomes  wholly 
so.  The  two  traits  that  most  struck  ob- 
servers of  poetic  inspiration  were  its  involun- 
tary and  its  unconscious  character.  The 
will  is  laid  to  sleep,  and  the  mind  works 
without  conscious  self-direction.  Any  lyri- 
cal poet,  like  Goethe,  for  example,  is  familiar 
with  the  process;  he  looks  upon  some  scene 
with    no    thought    of    writing    verses,    and 


12  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

suddenly,  out  of  nowhere,  the  song  sings 
itself  in  his  brain,  and  his  only  part  in  it  is 
to  remember  and  write  it  down.  It  is  not 
more  strange  in  the  case  of  a  poet,  whose 
brain  is  beat  into  rhythm,  that  a  mood 
should  so  discharge  itself  in  musical  images 
than  that  when  you  sit  down  before  the  fire, 
vivid  pictures  should  of  themselves  rise  before 
your  mind  in  revery.  The  spontaneous  ac- 
tion of  the  mind,  carrying  with  it  oblivion 
of  self,  seems  the  essential  factor  in  poetic 
inspiration,  as  it  is  known  to  us  from  the 
poets'  autobiographies.  Emotion  is  the  un- 
loosed force;  and  always  emotion  tends  to 
obliterate  the  reason,  not  only  by  dulling 
and  destroying  the  principle  of  caution,  but 
also  to  such  a  degree  that  after  the  access 
of  emotion  has  passed,  words  and  even  acts 
are  brokenly,  and  sometimes  not  at  all,  re- 
called. 

It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  emotion 
of  this  drifting  and  possessing  sort  is  primary 
in  human  nature.  It  may  well  be  that  the 
state  of  primitive  man  was  more  dreamlike 
than  we  easily  fancy,  that  as  he  emerged  from 
the  brute  his  mental  state  was  still  casual,  lax, 


POETIC  MADNESS  13 

uncertain,  subject  to  torpid  intervals,  and 
coursed  by  waves  of  panic  fear  and  strange 
expectancy.  The  great  effort  of  civilization 
has  been,  and  still  is,  the  attempt  to  introduce 
a  principle  of  control  into  that  casual  swarm 
of  impressions  which  makes  up  men's  thought 
and  of  which,  especially  when  swayed  by 
emotion,  spontaneous  action  is  the  law. 
The  poet,  then,  under  excitement,  seems  to 
present  the  phenomenon  of  a  highly  developed 
mind  working  in  a  primitive  way;  what  is 
called  his  madness  denotes  nothing  abnormal, 
but  is  rather  an  unusually  perfect  illustration 
of  the  normal  action  of  emotion  in  a  pure 
form;  he  is  mad  in  so  far  as  he  does  not  call 
either  will  or  reason  to  his  aid,  but  allows  un- 
impeded course  to  the  instinctive  expression  of 
passion. 

Passion,  then,  is  the  birthright  of  the 
poet;  without  it  he  is  nothing.  That  is  why 
the  poet  so  works  himself  into  the  hearts  of 
men;  for  emotion  is  fundamental  in  life; 
as  a  possession,  as  an  energy,  life  has  its 
value  in  its  emotional  moments.  It  is  true 
that  now  for  a  long  while  we  have  tried  to 
intellectualize  life;  it  is  the  great  aim  of 


14  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

literary  education.  But  the  life  that  is  led  in 
thought,  from  history  and  travel  and  learning 
through  all  its  compass,  is  life  at  second- 
hand. The  reality  lies,  in  general,  in  emo- 
tional contact.  If  two  men  exchange  thoughts, 
they  are  fellow-beings;  if  they  share  an 
emotion,  they  are  brother  men.  The  poet 
comes,  and  either  reflects  or  arouses  emotion 
and  shares  the  gift  he  brings,  and  is  thus 
always  and  in  all  lands  the  dear  comrade 
of  men.  Emotion  is  the  fusing  force  which 
unites  the  poet  with  his  fellow-men;  but 
first  in  his  own  career  it  has  united  him  with 
life. 

The  mode  in  which  it  does  so  is  simple. 
It  is  most  plain  in  that  part  of  experience 
which  directly  addresses  the  senses  and  is 
absorbed  therein.  The  poet  who  is  especially 
open  to  the  things  of  nature,  for  example, 
to  color  and  bloom  and  weather,  to  the  motion 
of  the  seas  and  the  infinity  of  the  stars, 
to  the  exhilaration  of  a  swim  or  a  ride, 
does  with  his  body  drink  the  light  of  the 
world  and  the  joy  of  existence.  How  many 
pages  of  the  most  welcome  verse  simply 
reflect  this  natural  joy  of  living!     It  is  not 


POETIC  MADNESS  15 

the  image  but  the  delight  of  the  image, 
not  the  event  but  the  joy  of  the  event  that 
exalts  sensation  into  poetry.  In  a  similar 
way  emotion  fuses  the  poet  with  ideas.  The 
type  is,  of  course,  the  fanatic  who  is  so  pos- 
sessed with  the  idea  that  he  becomes  no 
more  than  its  instrument  and  living  em- 
bodiment. The  revolutionary  poets  display 
this  power  with  clearness;  in  the  great 
songs  of  the  French  Revolution  the  Dionysiac 
quality,  the  presence  of  the  mad  throng,  the 
singing  horde,  had  its  last  great  literary 
illustration;  but  wherever  a  poet  sings  the 
causes  of  mankind,  there  is  this  fanatical 
blending  of  his  own  soul  with  the  idea. 
But  whether  in  the  senses  or  in  the  soul, 
emotion  throughout  the  field  is  the  life 
itself;  thought  is  only  the  means  of  life; 
and  even  in  the  case  where  great  thoughts, 
such  as  scientific  conceptions,  of  themselves 
generate  sublime  emotion,  the  consumma- 
tion of  the  thought  is  not  in  the  knowledge 
but  in  the  emotion. 

The  sign  of  the  poet,  then,  is  that  by 
passion  he  enters  into  life  more  than  other 
men.     That  is  his  gift,  —  the  power  to  live. 


16  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

The  lives  of  poets  are  but  little  known;  but 
from  the  fragments  of  their  lives  that  come 
down  to  us,  the  characteristic  legend  is  that 
they  have  been  singularly  creatures  of  pas- 
sion. They  lived  before  they  sang.  Emo- 
tion is  the  condition  of  their  existence; 
passion  is  the  element  of  their  being;  and, 
moreover,  the  intensifying  power  of  such  a 
state  of  passion  must  also  be  remembered,  for 
emotion  of  itself  naturally  heightens  all  the 
faculties,  and  genius  burns  the  brighter  in  its 
own  flames.  The  poet  craves  emotion,  and 
feeds  the  fire  that  consumes  him,  and  only 
under  this  condition  is  he  baptized  with 
creative  power.  It  is  to  be  expected,  there- 
fore, that  the  tradition  of  the  poet's  life 
should  have  an  element  of  strangeness  in  it; 
and,  in  fact,  to  neglect  those  cases  where 
genius  has  touched  the  border  of  actual  mad- 
ness, every  poet  has  this  stamp  of  destiny 
set  upon  him.  There  is  always  some  wildness 
in  his  nature;  he  is  apt  to  be  roving,  adven- 
turous, unforeseen;  he  is  without  fear,  he  is 
careless  of  his  life,  he  is  not  to  be  commanded  ; 
freedom  is  what  he  most  dearly  loves,  and 
he  will  have  it  at  any  peril ;  that  from  which 


POETIC  MADNESS  17 

he  will  not  be  divided  is  the  primeval  heri- 
tage, the  Dionysiac  madness  that  resides 
not  only  in  the  instincts,  but  in  all  the  facul- 
ties of  man,  —  the  power  and  the  passion  to 
live.  It  is  a  widespread  error,  and  due  only 
to  the  academic  second-hand  practice  of 
poetry,  to  oppose  the  poet  to  the  man  of 
action,  or  assign  to  him  a  merely  contem- 
plative role  in  life,  or  in  other  ways  deny 
reality  to  the  poet's  experience;  intensity 
of  living  is  preliminary  to  all  great  expression. 
From  the  beginning,  about  the  rude  altar  of 
the  god,  to  the  days  of  Goethe,  of  Leopardi, 
and  of  Victor  Hugo,  the  poet  is  the  leader  in 
the  dance  of  life;  and  the  phrase  by  which 
we  name  his  singularity,  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment, denotes  the  primacy  of  that  passion  in 
his  blood  with  which  the  frame  of  other  men 
is  less  richly  charged. 

The  poet  seems  always  a  lonely  figure; 
but  this  is  the  paradox  that  the  more  lonely 
he  is,  the  more  he  is  a  leader.  The  second 
trait  of  poetic  energy  is  that  it  is  a  social 
power,  and  this  is  no  whit  less  essential 
than  its  emotional  basis.  It  is  true  that  in 
early  times  poetic  energy  in  its  rude  forms, 


18  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

as  the  rhythm  of  labor,  of  war,  and  of  the 
feast,  had  a  larger  social  place  and  extended 
more  widely  over  primitive  life;  it  was  not 
then  individualized  at  all.  Rhythm  origi- 
nally was  more  obviously  the  social  bond,  in 
joint  movements  of  the  throng,  than  it  is 
now  in  the  arts  developed  out  of  it,  —  sculp- 
ture, music,  and  poetry.  The  greatness  of  all 
the  arts,  it  has  been  widely  and  justly  pro- 
claimed, lies  in  their  social  character;  in  so 
far  as  they  minister  only  to  individuals  they 
are  sterilized.  Literature  is  the  greatest  of 
the  arts  because  its  social  scope  is  most  ex- 
tended and  most  penetrating.  What  holy 
cities  are  to  nomadic  tribes,  —  a  symbol  of  race 
and  a  bond  of  union, —  great  books  are  to  the 
wandering  souls  of  men;  they  are  the  Meccas 
of  the  mind.  Homer  was  to  Greece  another 
Delphi.  In  the  geography  of  the  mind 
national  literatures  stand  like  mountain 
ranges,  marking  the  great  emotional  up- 
heavals of  the  race;  such  are  the  sacred 
books  of  all  peoples;  such  was  the  literature 
of  Greece,  the  glory  that  shone  when  reason 
came  to  birth  among  men;  such  were  the 
outburst  of  Italian  poetry  and  the  partic- 


POETIC  MADNESS  19 

ular  periods  of  greatness  in  the  modern 
literatures  of  Europe.  Great  literatures,  in 
other  words,  are  formed  along  the  lines  of 
fracture  in  the  social  advance  of  the  race. 
It  is  true  that  supreme  social  value  seems  to 
belong  rather  to  the  books  of  past  ages;  but 
this  is  largely  an  error  of  perspective,  for 
distance  is  essential  to  the  measurement. 
The  race  is  content  to  live  long  on  the  mem- 
ory of  such  achievement;  and  the  channels 
of  social  emotion  on  the  great  scale  having 
been  once  worked  out,  the  moods  of  men 
flow  therein  for  a  long  age. 

The  fixity  of  these  ancient  channels,  too, 
is  an  essential  factor  in  the  problem  of  poetic 
energy.  Plato  recommended  that  no  poetry 
be  allowed  in  the  state  except  hymns  of  a 
fixed  ceremonial  character;  and  curiously 
the  fact  is  that  literature  always  tends  to 
approach  that  state  of  tradition.  Life  every- 
where hardens  into  formulas  ;  and  thus  in 
literature  books  become  established  as  clas- 
sics, schools  of  poetry  become  academic, 
expression  becomes  formulistic.  Emotion, 
that  is,  discharges  itself  through  accustomed 
channels,  through  images  and  phrases  and 


20  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

cadences  that  have  become  its  known  lan- 
guage ;  as,  for  example,  was  the  case  with  that 
special  form  of  poetry  known  as  Petrarchan. 
The  emotion  is  genuine,  but  the  form  is  old. 
When  it  has  been  shown  that  Shakspere 
employed  in  his  sonnets  the  conventional 
European  expression  of  emotion,  it  has  not 
been  shown  that  the  emotion  was  not  genuine, 
but  merely  that  the  poet  used  a  convention- 
alized art.  How  much  of  reality  can  exist  in 
conventionalized  art  the  whole  early  history 
of  painting  and  sculpture  shows.  The  expres- 
sion of  emotion  is  generally  conventional,  and 
the  more  social  it  is,  the  more  is  it  conven- 
tionalized. 

The  poet,  therefore,  new  born  in  the  world, 
finds  the  field  preoccupied.  Religion,  for  ex- 
ample, is  supplied  with  literary  expression  in  its 
Bibles  and  hymns,  and  besides  has  the  works  of 
the  other  arts,  architecture,  sculpture,  paint- 
ing, and  music,  and,  in  addition,  the  splendor 
and  awe  of  its  ritual.  The  national  passion,  pa- 
triotism, finds  embodiment  for  itself  in  long- 
established  literature  as  well  as  in  other  ways. 
In  fact,  the  poet  finds  social  emotion  already 
ritualized,  if  I  may  say  so,  in  every  part  of 


POETIC  MADNESS  21 

life.  He  enters  into  no  rivalry  with  the 
work  which  has  already  been  accomplished 
by  his  predecessors;  he  rejoices  in  it,  but  it 
is  not  his  work.  It  follows  that  the  new 
poet  is  necessarily  the  exponent  of  emotion 
in  new  fields  or  turned  toward  new  objects; 
he  is  an  experimenter,  as  it  were,  in  life; 
and  this  accounts  often  for  his  hard  fate. 
If  he  is  to  be  great,  he  is  already  on  that  line 
of  fracture  in  social  evolution  of  which  I  have 
just  spoken.  He  sometimes  stands  in  the 
light  of  an  unrisen  day.  Hence,  in  his  own 
time,  he  may  appear  even  antisocial.  How 
often  has  the  poet  been  denounced  as  an 
atheist,  as  a  revolutionist,  an  innovator,  a 
wild  thinker  and  rash  actor,  and  always  as  a 
dreamer!  It  is  because  his  natural  habitat 
is  there,  in  the  new  and  unknown  stir  of  the 
world  coming  to  birth.  It  is  altogether 
natural  that  he  should  be  discredited,  un- 
recognized or  disowned,  that  he  should  go 
hungry  and  often  starve,  that  he  should  die 
in  poverty  and  neglect,  that  the  very  name 
of  the  poet  in  history  should  be  a  synonym 
for  sorrow  and  want.  This  has  been  his  lot 
in  all  ages,  and  if  any  poet  has  escaped  it,  he 


22  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

has  done  so  by  a  miracle.  The  contrast 
between  his  poor  and  solitary  state  and  his 
after  fame  is  one  of  the  fascinations  that 
fasten  the  eyes  of  men  upon  him.  It  seems 
strange  that  a  great  social  force  should  have 
resided  in  so  despised  an  individual.  But 
the  world's  work  is  not  done  in  crowds, 
though  crowds  are  the  instruments  and 
beneficiaries  of  it.  Where  the  man  of  science 
in  his  lonely  study  or  silent  laboratory 
toils  in  secret,  where  Newton  or  Pasteur 
works,  there  the  brain  of  the  race  thinks, 
and  wins  its  slow  advance  on  the  unknown; 
and  where  the  poet  is,  though  he  be  in  the 
wilderness,  there  the  heart  of  the  race  beats. 
The  poet,  born  for  the  future,  will  be  found 
always  in  the  thick  of  ideas  and  in  the  heat  of 
the  glowing  world  of  change;  he  takes  into 
his  single  breast  the  rising  mass,  and  shapes 
upon  his  lips  in  silence  the  master  words  of 
many  thousand  men. 

It  might  appear  that  the  poet,  who  is  thus 
a  creature  of  passion  and  in  the  whirl  of  new 
social  forces,  is  doomed  to  abide  in  a  state  of 
chaos;  and  the  poet,  in  a  certain  sense,  is  the 
most  lawless  of  men.     Yet,  as  I  have  indi- 


POETIC  MADNESS  23 

cated,  there  is  a  principle  of  control;  it  is 
art.  The  original  element  of  art  is  rhythm, 
that  very  measure  of  which  the  primitive 
cadence  still  times  the  poet's  utterance; 
and  it  is  true  that  the  mere  music  of  verse 
has  a  power  of  itself  "in  the  very  torrent, 
tempest,  and  whirlwind  of  passion"  to  beget 
a  temperance  that  gives  it  smoothness.  But 
art,  though  growing  historically  out  of  mere 
rhythm,  is  a  broader  principle,  and  as  it 
grows,  it  becomes  more  and  more  an  intel- 
lectual thing.  In  Nietzsche's  phrase,  this  is 
Apollo's  domain,  the  realm  of  intellect;  for 
form  is  an  intellectual  thing.  The  dream, 
which  accompanies  emotion,  is  in  truth  its 
other  and  finite  incarnation;  it  is  the  woof 
of  color  and  image,  —  all  that  is  especially 
taken  note  of  by  the  eye,  which  is  the  most 
intellectual  of  the  senses,  and  by  the  under- 
standing, which  is  the  eye  of  the  mind; 
whether  in  its  physical  representation,  which 
is  woven  of  the  senses,  or  in  its  bodiless  con- 
ception, which  belongs  to  the  higher  life  of 
moral  contemplation  and  abstract  truth,  it 
is  the  idea;  and  it  is  this  accompanying 
dream,  this   idea,   this  form  of   art,  which 


24  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

gives  relief  to  the  emotion,  disburdens,  and 
quiets  it. 

The  idea  in  this  sense  is  the  sphere  of 
form;  it  is  in  this  dream  that  the  mind  works, 
that  art  resides.  It  is  this,  too,  that  gives 
character  to  the  emotion;  for  emotion  is 
noble  or  base,  wise  or  foolish,  a  power  to 
save  or  a  power  to  ruin,  according  to  the 
objects  and  events  toward  which  it  is  di- 
rected and  the  mode  in  which  it  envelops 
them.  The  development  of  the  idea,  the 
arrangement  of  its  parts  and  phases,  the 
order  of  the  ode  or  the  drama  or  the  epic  in 
unfolding  its  theme,  is  in  poetry  the  labor  of 
art;  it  is  what  composition  is  in  sculpture 
or  painting.  This  art,  however,  in  the  sense 
of  a  principle  of  control,  has  two  modes; 
one  lies  in  the  dream  itself,  in  its  original 
emanation  from  the  mind,  in  its  substance; 
the  other  lies  in  its  handling.  The  substance 
of  the  dream  is  one  thing;  the  handling  of  it 
is  another;  and  it  is  to  the  handling  that 
what  is  called  technique,  the  most  conscious 
form  of  art,  specially  refers.  It  is  to  be  borne 
in  mind,  however,  that  just  as  poetic  energy 
is  not  something  brought  down  from  heaven, 


POETIC  MADNESS  25 

but  is  the  fire  and  motion  of  life  itself,  so  the 
dream  that  attends  emotion  is  not  something 
artificially  and  arbitrarily  united  with  it,  but  is 
given  forth  from  it,  and  is  as  naturally  joined 
there  as  the  flower  to  the  root.  Try  as  one 
may,  one  cannot  in  poetry  —  not  even  in 
its  art  —  escape  from  the  omnipresence  of 
this  secret  power,  the  mystery  that  gives 
forth  life,  of  that  which  is  beneath  all.  It 
is  one  great  use  of  works  of  art  that  they  teach 
our  eyes  to  see,  even  in  nature  and  human 
life  as  they  are,  the  beauty  with  which  they 
are  clothed  in  their  actuality.  Emotion, 
in  its  own  natural  expression,  is  a  beautiful 
or  pathetic  or  terrifying  sight.  There  is  an 
unconscious  power  in  life  itself  to  clothe  its 
own  emanation  so;  and  of  this  power  art  is 
the  follower  in  imagination.  In  the  poet 
this  instinctive  power  in  himself  gives  the 
dream,  the  substance;  he  cannot  tell  how 
it  arises  in  him ;  it  comes  as  the  smile  comes 
to  the  lips  or  tears  to  the  eyes  —  he  knows 
not  whence  they  are;  and,  furthermore,  he  is 
not  yet  the  poet,  but  only  the  novice,  if  his 
technical  skill  is  not  also  instinctively  applied 
and  the  arrangement  of  the  theme  instinc- 


26  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

tively  accomplished.  In  the  stroke  of  genius 
there  is  no  calculation.  The  poet  does  not  scan 
his  verses  nor  hunt  his  rhymes,  any  more  than 
the  musical  composer  seeks  for  concords;  still 
less  does  he  search  for  color  and  image  and  idea. 
He  is  as  unconscious  of  his  processes,  even 
when  originally  acquired  with  difficulty,  as  the 
athlete  is  of  the  play  of  his  muscles.  The 
mastery  of  technique  is,  indeed,  necessary 
to  the  novice,  but  it  is  only  the  tuning  of  the 
instrument ;  conscious  art  must  pass  into  the 
hand,  the  eye,  the  brain,  the  heart,  and  there 
be  forgotten,  nor  does  it  become  true  power 
until  it  is  so  forgotten.  The  dream,  the  idea, 
both  in  its  substance  and  its  handling, 
its  constituting  form  and  its  technique,  is, 
in  the  work  of  genius,  instinctive;  unless 
it  be  so,  it  is  flawed  and  incomplete.  Art  is 
a  perfect  principle  of  control  only  when  it 
thus  operates,  as  rhythm  does,  like  a  law  of 
nature,  from  which,  in  fact,  it  is  not  to  be 
distinguished;  for  it  is  that  secret  law  of 
harmony  unveiled  in  man's  nature. 

Poetic  energy,  so  conceived,  is  a  phenome- 
non of  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  and 
is  ruled,  both  in  emotion  and  in  idea,  by  its 


POETIC  MADNESS  27 

own  inward  law.  The  passion  of  life  embodies 
itself  in  all  men  according  as  they  have 
the  power  to  live,  in  experience;  and  in  the 
poets  it  embodies  itself  in  imagination. 
The  passion  of  life,  which  is  the  great  mystery 
of  the  universe,  shapes  unto  itself  many  forms 
in  different  ages,  in  different  climes,  under 
different  gods.  It  has  many  births ;  and  the 
miracle  of  this  mystery  is  the  diversity 
of  these  births,  the  novelty  and  surprise 
of  each  new  morning  as  it  breaks  upon  a 
world  whose  law  is  death  and  which  is  forever 
passing  away.  I  said  that  the  poet  is  the 
most  lawless  of  men ;  that  is  because  he  lives 
in  an  ampler  law,  because  the  life  that  is  born 
in  him  refuses  to  be  bound  in  the  old  births  of 
time;  he  breaks  all  conventions,  he  tramples 
on  all  superstitions,  he  violates  all  barriers ; 
for  he  brings  his  own  world  with  him,  and 
new  horizons.  Emerson  said  that  the  birth 
of  a  poet  is  the  chief  event  in  chronology. 
He  means  that  they  mark  the  great  changes 
in  the  minds  of  men.  Wherever  such  a  change 
is  nigh,  wherever  the  flame  of  life  bursts  forth 
with  most  power  and  splendor,  there  the  poet 
is  found;  he  is  the  morning  and  the  evening 


28  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

star  of  civilizations.  He  is  but  one  among 
men,  but  in  his  single  soul  the  soul  of  man- 
kind comes  to  fullest  consciousness  of  itself 
and  is  illuminated  from  horizon  to  horizon, 
from  height  to  depth.  He  seems  to  men  divine 
because  he  thus  gives  to  them  the  divine 
part  of  themselves^  His  fame  may  be  swift 
or  slow,  but  in  the  end  it  fills  the  world. 
He  is  lawless,  judged  by  the  finite;  but  in  his 
passion  and  his  dream  he  has  given  himself 
to  a  higher  law,  and  reposes  on  the  infinite, 
of  which  he  is  the  latest  birth.  So  it  seems 
to  him.  In  these  lectures  I  shall  present  the 
genius  of  six  of  these  poets  as  illustrations  of 
that  passion  and  power  of  life  in  which  poetic 
energy  consists. 


II 

MARLOWE 

Marlowe  is  the  very  type  of  the  poet 
whom  I  have  described.  "Mad"  is  the  first 
epithet  that  comes  to  our  lips  in  thinking  of 
him,  —  "mad  Marlowe," — whether  one  looks 
at  the  wildness  of  his  unregulated  career  or  at 
the  tameless  force  embodied  in  his  genius  or 
at  the  romantic  extravaganza  that  is  the  body 
of  his  literary  achievement.  Brief  and  tragic 
were  the  annals  of  his  life.  He  was  born  two 
months  before  Shakspere;  son  of  a  shoe- 
maker at  Canterbury;  educated  at  school 
and  college;  a  scholar  when  he  came  down 
from  Cambridge  to  London,  which  he  entered 
the  same  year  with  Shakspere;  favored  by 
the  theatres  and  the  public;  a  wild  liver, 
impulsive,  passionate,  uncontrolled,  giving 
his  genius  free  way  with  himself  for  the 
eight  years  of  his  manhood  during  which  he 
did  his  work ;  faithful  to  his  intellectual  part 

29 


30  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

and  industrious  as  he  must  have  been  to  have 
accomplished  all  that  he  did;  and  killed  in  a 
tavern  brawl  at  the  age  of  thirty.  This  is  all 
that  we  know  of  him ;  yet  in  every  line  of  this 
story  one  knows  that  it  is  the  epitaph  of  genius. 
He  was  in  his  own  day  denounced  as  an 
atheist  and  blasphemer,  and  his  death  was 
long  cited  as  a  notable  instance  of  God's  sud- 
den justice.  "Not  inferior  to  these,"  says 
one  account,  "was  one  Christopher  Marlow, 
by  profession  a  play-maker,  who,  as  it  is 
reported,  about  14  years  ago  wrote  a  book 
against  the  Trinity.  But  see  the  effects  of 
God's  justice!  It  so  happened  that  at  Det- 
ford,  a  little  village  about  three  miles  distant 
from  London,  as  he  meant  to  stab  with 
his  ponyard  one  named  Ingram  that  had  in- 
vited him  hither  to  a  feast  and  was  then  play- 
ing at  tables,  he  quickly  perceiving  it  so 
avoided  the  thrust  that  withal,  drawing  out 
his  dagger  for  his  defense,  he  stabbed  this  Mar- 
low  into  the  eye  in  such  sort  that,  his  braines 
coming  out  at  the  dagger's  point,  he  shortly 
after  died.  Thus  did  God,  the  true  execu- 
tioner of  divine  justice,  work  the  end  of 
impious  atheists."     So  runs  the  Puritan's  ac- 


MARLOWE  31 

count  of  this  tragic  episode;  and  it  is  alto- 
gether likely  that  Marlowe,  lawless  in  all 
ways,  was  a  free-thinker,  and  being  a  child 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance  was  then  intellec- 
tually what  was  called  Machiavellian  in  his 
ideas. 

Notwithstanding  this  grewsome  picture 
of  the  atheist's  bloody  death,  it  was  not 
thus  that  the  poets  of  that  age  saw  the 
protagonist  of  their  company  who  brought 
in  "the  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth." 
Their  tributes  to  his  memory  make  us  aware 
of  an  exceptional  quality  in  the  man,  of  the 
burning  of  a  fire  in  him  such  as  no  other  of  his 
comrades  knew  the  touch  of,  of  something 
that  transfigured  him;  and  this  transfigu- 
ration is  seen  in  the  fact  that  he  alone  of 
all  that  group  was  idealized  by  them  in 
fancy.  The  poets  brought  flowers  as  if  to 
hide  the  corpse  of  that  grisly  memory  of 
his  death.  It  is  much  that  he  who  lay  there 
was  Shakspere's  "dead  shepherd."  The 
other  lesser  poets,  whenever  they  speak  of 
him,  are  instinctively  touched  with  imagina- 
tive fantasy.  Chapman,  invoking  the  Muse, 
bids  her  seek  Marlowe's  spirit,  and  after  death 


32  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

"  find  the  eternal  clime 
Of  his  free  soul,  whose  living  subject  stood 
Up  to  the  chin  in  the  Pierian  flood"; 

and  in  the  flowing  line  we  seem  to  feel  the  full 
flood  of  that  stream  of  poetry  as  it  broke 
forth  in  its  own  age.  Drayton's  oft-quoted 
words  transmit  the  strange  fire  that  was  in  the 
young  poet's  whole  frame  like  a  second  soul : — 

"NextMarlow,  bathed  in  the  Thespian  springs, 
Had  in  him  those  brave  translunary  things 
That  the  first  poets  had ;  his  raptures  were 
All  air  and  fire  which  made  his  verses  clear ; 
For  that  fine  madness  still  he  did  retain 
Which  rightly  should  possess  a  poet's  brain." 

Personal  fascination  survives  in  this  descrip- 
tion,—  the  transcendency  of  genius,  seen, 
felt,  touched,  as  it  were,  in  its  mortal  body  by 
mortal  senses.  Still  another  youthful  poet, 
like  Chapman,  following  the  spirit  with  praise 
after  death, 

"where  Mario's  gone 
To  live  with  beauty  in  Elyzium, "  — 

gives  us  the  contemporary  glow  of  enthusiasm 
for  Marlowe's  eloquent  and  musical  fancy :  — 


MARLOWE  33 

"Whose  silver-charming  tongue  moved  such  delight 
That  men  would  shun  their  sleep  in  still  dark  night 
To  meditate  upon  his  golden  lines." 

It  is  by  the  light  of  such  tributes  as  these 
that  we  recall  and  re-create  the  young  poet,  — 
in  his  rise  the  star  of  the  Elizabethan  morning, 
in  his  tragic  fall,  as  Lowell  called  him,  "the 
herald  that  dropped  dead  in  announcing  the 
victory  in  whose  fruits  he  was  not  to  share." 

"  Cut  is  the  branch  that  might  have  grown  full  straight, 
And  burned  is  Apollo's  laurel  bough," 

we  cry;  the  sense  of  the  limitless  power  and 
suggestion  of  genius  blends  with  the  accident 
of  its  extinction  in  its  first  burst,  —  the  pathos 
of  what  was  never  to  be,  the  tragedy  of  a  soul 
of  price  lost  to  mankind;  and  with  this 
mood  dumbly  mingles  the  universal  feeling 
of  some  darkness  in  poetic  fate,  and  obtains 
mastery  of  the  heart  and  controls  insensibly 
the  judgment.  To  all  later  poets,  as  to  his 
contemporaries,  Marlowe  is  a  younger  brother, 
struck  by  the  shaft  of  unkind  gods ;  something 
of  that  transfiguration  that  his  fellows  saw  — 
the  silver  flood  of  beauty  about  him,  the 
miraculous   fire   within   him  —  still   lingers, 


34  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

and  he  stays  to  abide  our  question  rather  in 
his  spirit,  in  the  might  of  unaccomplished 
resources,  than  in  any  created  work  that 
came  from  his  hand. 

One  work  there  is,  however,  in  which  his 
youthfulness  stands  revealed,  his  tastes  and 
sensibilities,  the  richness  of  his  emotions, 
and  the  warmth  of  his  life.  The  transla- 
tion he  made  after  Moschus,  called  "  Hero  and 
Leander,"  gave  to  English  literature  its 
single  work  of  the  pagan  paradise,  and  it 
shows  such  an  endowment  of  the  soul  and 
body  of  passion  in  the  hand  that  wrote  it  and 
the  heart  that  brooded  it,  as  leaves  its  young 
author  among  English  poets  without  a  rival 
for  sensuous  happiness.  The  poem  still  stands 
alone;  neither  its  mood  nor  its  music  has 
ever  since  been  heard  in  England.  It  was 
plainly  this  poem  that  clothed  Marlowe  with 
that  atmosphere  of  the  golden  age  in  which 
his  brother  poets  saw  him  stand.  By  it  he 
became  for  them  the  heir  of  classic  beauty 
and  the  living  token  of  that  voluptuousness 
in  the  joys  of  the  imagination  which  was  the 
poetic  charm  of  the  Italian  Renaissance; 
and  to  them  he  stood  forth  like  an  inhabitant 


MARLOWE  35 

of  that  fair  realm,  native  to  that  air,  and 
mixed  with  the  figures  and  the  landscape 
of  his  own  vision.  We  can  realize  only  faintly 
the  power  with  which  this  great  movement, 
the  Renaissance,  the  new  and  second  birth 
of  man's  intellect  and  senses,  came  upon  the 
nations  of  the  West;  with  what  vital  surprise, 
what  energizing  force,  what  kindling  im- 
pulses along  the  nerves  of  will  and  desire, 
with  what  intoxication  of  intellectual  curiosity 
and  artistic  passion,  this  renovation  of  life 
in  Italy  fell  in  the  second  century  of  its  accu- 
mulated mass,  and  made  impact  through  a 
thousand  channels  on  such  an  age  as  Eliza- 
beth's and  on  such  a  fiery  and  sensitive 
temperament,  such  an  originative  and  shap- 
ing genius  as  Marlowe's.  This  little  poem, 
nevertheless,  is  like  a  single  blossom  from 
that  world-wide  field,  and  may  give  us  the 
hue  and  fragrance  of  the  Renaissance  in 
flower,  if  we  will:  so  a  rose  shadows  us  with 
Persia,  or  a  single  lotus  blossom  unbosoms 
all  the  Nile. 

One  quality  the  poem  has,  which  specially 
•characterizes  it  as  Marlowe's  handiwork,  — 
an  excitement  of  the  imagination  resulting  in 


36  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

exuberance  of  fancy,  a  stream  of  decorative 
art,  an  incessant  welling  up  of  imagery  and 
epithet  in  profuse  and  exhaustless  abundance ; 
no  poem  is  so  fluent,  so  effortless,  so  negligently 
rich  in  this  regard,  so  prodigal  in  its  spending 
of  the  coin  of  fancy.  In  that  age  when  all  the 
seas  first  yielded  to  man,  imagination,  too, 
made  her  voyages  of  discovery,  and  brought 
home  gold  and  pearl  and  the  marvel  of  the 
loom  from  every  clime;  many  a  passage  in  the 
poets  of  those  days  is  a  museum  in  itself; 
and  of  this  rifled  wealth  of  the  Elizabethan 
world,  heaped  from  antique  and  oriental 
sources  and  every  quarter  of  learning  or  of 
fable,  Marlowe  was  a  master.  In  "  Hero  and 
Leander"  he  showed  only  his  prentice  hand 
in  this  lavish  piracy.  It  is,  nevertheless, 
even  there  a  sign  of  that  overflowingness 
which  stamped  his  genius  from  the  first  as  of 
a  royal  nature.  He  had  neither  to  search 
nor  to  hoard,  but  only  to  spend.  It  was  not, 
however,  in  a  love  episode,  a  few  hundred 
lines  in  length,  however  stored  with  languor 
and  beauty,  that  he  was  to  show  his  wealth, 
but  on  the  broad  stage  of  England.  The  poet, 
nevertheless,  was  prior  to  the  dramatist  in 


MARLOWE  37 

Marlowe,  as  indeed  all  the  Elizabethans 
were  poets  first  and  dramatists  afterwards; 
and  it  was  this  poet,  the  child  of  Italy  and 
the  Hellespont  breathing  English  air,  that  his 
brother  poets  loved  and  immortalized,  before 
ever  his  greater  fame  as  the  first  fashioner  of 
a  noble  and  lofty  style  for  English  drama 
was  even  dreamed  of. 

I  own  that  the  early  English  drama  has 
caused  me  much  weariness  even  in  my 
youthful  days,  and  neither  would  I  now  volun- 
tarily read  it,  nor  should  I  have  the  heart 
to  subject  any  other  to  the  trial.  For  men 
of  English  speech  the  drama  is  necessarily 
measured  by  Shakspere;  and  in  a  certain 
sense  he  raises  his  fellows  to  his  own  neigh- 
borhood. So,  when  one  stands  upon  the 
highest  summit  of  some  many-folded  range 
of  hills,  the  mere  loftiness  of  his  station 
makes  the  lower  crowns,  distinct  and  bold 
beneath  him,  seem  little  inferior;  but  when, 
on  the  other  hand,  descending,  he  makes  one 
of  them  his  perch,  how  the  lonely  monarch 
soars  aloft!  Thus  it  is  when  from  Shak- 
spere's  height  men  survey  his  fellows,  the 
swelling  names  of  that  Elizabethan  cluster. 


426( 


38  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

"  Marlowe,"  they  say,  "on  whose  dawn- 
flushed  brow  the  morning  clouds  too  soon 
crept  with  envious  vapors  that  the  most  golden 
of  Apollo's  shafts  should  never  pierce  more; 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  twins  of  the  summer 
noontide,  and  Chapman  bearing  his  weight  of 
forests  with  the  ease  and  might  of  old  Titans ; 
Ford  and  Webster  who  made  their  home  with 
the  tempest  and  seemed  to  leash  the  thunder ; ' ' 
and  so  on  with  all  the  others  of  the  tremendous 
upheaval  of  the  age.  But  when  one  leaves 
Shakspere's  ground,  and  descends  to  any  of 
these,  how  tumid  is  all  such  description, 
while  undiminished  the  king  of  the  peaks 
still  soars  in  the  sky!  It  is  not  by  our  will 
that  Shakspere's  altitude  is  made  the 
measure  of  other  men  who  were  so  unfortu- 
nate as  to  be  born  his  rivals;  one  can  help  it 
no  more  than  the  eye  can  help  seeing.  His 
genius  reduced  all  his  contemporaries  to  per- 
petual subjection  to  itself;  no  superlatives 
can  be  offered  in  their  praise  except  by  his 
leave,  and  when  their  own  worth  is  made 
known,  the  last  service  they  do,  in  showing 
us  how  invaluable  is  Shakspere's  treasure, 
is  perhaps  the  most  useful. 


MARLOWE  39 

Even  Marlowe,  in  whose  youth,  if  anywhere 
in  history,  was  the  promise  of  a  mate  for 
Shakspere,  needs  the  latter's  withdrawal 
before  he  can  tread  the  stage.  Some  would 
say  possibly  that  Shakspere  might  not  have 
obtained  entrance  there  with  Lear  and 
Othello,  if  Marlowe  had  not  first  fitted  the 
tragic  buskin  to  the  high  step  of  Tambur- 
laine;  and  in  a  sense  the  retort  is  just.  The 
highest  genius  avails  itself  of  those  who  go 
before  to  prepare  the  way,  the  road-makers 
building  the  paths  of  speech  and  opening  the 
provinces  of  thought;  but  to  be  forced  to 
stipulate  at  the  outset  that  a  great  name 
in  literature,  such  as  Marlowe's,  shall  be  con- 
sidered only  with  reference  to  his  turn  in 
historical  development  is  to  make  a  confes- 
sion of  weakness  in  the  cause;  it  is  to  forego 
his  claim  to  be  considered  as  a  writer  of  uni- 
versal literature.  What  the  difference  is, 
in  Marlowe's  case,  is  tersely  indicated  by  the 
fact  that  competent  students  discern  his  genius 
in  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  which  in  Shakspere's 
crown  is  rather  a  foil  than  a  gem.  This  play, 
with  Marlowe's  touch  still  on  it,  would  illus- 
trate,   if    compared    with    Shakspere's    un- 


40  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

doubted  work,  how  cumbrous  and  stiffening 
were  the  shackles  of  the  stage  tradition  from 
which  Shakspere  freed  the  art.  But  in  Mar- 
lowe's accredited  dramas,  say,  in  "Doctor 
Faustus"  (to  lay  aside  the  rant  of  "  Tambur- 
laine"  as  merely  initiatory,  tentative,  and 
facile)  the  necessities  of  contemporaneous  taste 
and  usage  are  so  tyrannical  as  almost  to  ruin  the 
work  for  any  other  age.  "  Doctor  Faustus ' '  is 
a  series  of  slightly  connected  scenes  from  the 
life  of  a  conjuror,  in  which  thaumaturgy  and 
the  hatred  of  the  Papacy  are  made  to  furnish 
comic  horseplay  of  a  clownish  kind;  or  else  fear 
of  the  devil  is  used  to  freeze  the  blood  of  the 
spectators  with  the  horns,  hoofs,  and  fire  of 
coarse  horror.  Of  the  dramatic  capabilities 
of  the  Faust  legend  as  a  whole  Marlowe 
indicates  no  perception.  He  caught  the 
force  of  two  situations  in  it,  —  the  invocation 
of  Helen's  shadow  and  the  soliloquy;  but 
though  in  treating  these  he  exhibited  genius 
as  bold,  direct,  and  original  as  Shakspere's 
own,  they  are  merely  fragmentary.  Ex- 
cept in  these  scenes  in  which  Marlowe's 
voice  really  quells  his  time  and  sounds  alone 
in  the  theatre,  the  uproar  of  the  pit  frightens 


MARLOWE  41 

away  the  Muse  and  leaves  comedy  and  tragedy 
alike  to  the  ruthless  disfigurement  of  the  early 
English  stage.  In  "The  Jew  of  Malta," 
even  if  the  first  two  acts  are  fashioned  by 
dramatic  genius  as  no  other  but  Shakspere 
could  have  moulded  them,  the  last  three  taper 
off  into  the  tail  of  the  old  monster  that  had 
flopped  and  shuffled  on  the  mediaeval  boards 
on  every  saint's  day.  In  "Edward  II" 
alone  is  there  drama,  properly  speaking; 
it  is  complete,  connected,  sustained,  and  it 
has  tenderness,  passion,  and  pathos;  but 
though  Swinburne  gives  it  the  palm  in  cer- 
tain particulars  over  Shakspere's  "Richard 
II,"  which  was  modelled  after  it,  the  former 
will  not  bear  comparison  with  the  latter  in 
dramatic  grasp.  To  notice  but  one  differ- 
ence ;  in  Marlowe's  work  the  king's  favoritism 
is  so  much  an  infatuation  and  a  weakness 
that  he  loses  sympathy,  and  his  dethronement, 
apart  from  its  brutal  miseries,  is  felt  to  be 
just;  while  in  Shakspere  Richard's  favorit- 
ism is  retired  far  in  the  background,  and  his 
faith  in  his  divine  right  to  the  crown 
(never  insisted  on  by  Edward)  is  so  eloquent, 
and  so  pervades  and  qualifies  the  whole  play, 


42  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

that  when  the  king  is  murdered,  one  is  driven 
to  believe  that  the  bishop's  denunciation  of 
God's  vengeance  on  the  usurping  Lancaster 
must  prove  true  prophecy.  In  the  matter 
of  dramatic  handling  there  can  be  no  doubt 
of  Shakspere's  more  expert  sense,  though 
his  ideality  may  make  the  characterization 
appear,  as  it  does  to  Swinburne,  less  sharp. 
"Edward  II"  is  Marlowe's  best  play;  but, 
with  this  exception,  his  dramas  in  general  are 
deeply  engaged  in  the  rawness  of  the  time, 
dependent  in  many  scenes  on  vulgar  spectacle 
and  buffoonery,  on  burlesque  and  rout  and 
horror,  Tamburlaine's  chariot  drawn  by 
captive  kings  in  harness,  the  nose  of  Barabas, 
which  passed  into  a  proverb  for  its  enor- 
mousness,  and  similar  features.  So  much 
must  be  allowed,  lest  the  unwary  making 
acquaintance  with  these  plays  should  find 
but  strange  entertainment.  Marlowe,  as  a 
dramatist,  is  not  to  be  judged  apart  from  his 
historical  moment;  nor  are  his  works  to  be 
appreciated  intelligently  except  by  the  stu- 
dent of  the  dramatic  development  of  our  stage. 
But  notwithstanding  the  crudity  of  Mar- 
lowe's works,   as  wholes,   every  page  pro- 


MARLOWE  43 

claims  the  transcendency  of  the  genius,  of 
the  poetic  energy,  there  at  work.  It  is  an 
energy  that  has  a  volcanic  lift,  splendid, 
terrifying,  filling  heaven.  Marlowe's  great 
achievement,  in  that  age  of  discoveries  and 
rediscoveries,  which,  blending  together,  con- 
stituted a  renewal  of  man's  life  and  brought 
a  new  world  into  being,  was  to  rediscover  the 
main  source,  the  fountainhead,  of  dramatic 
power.  He  rediscovered  passion,  which  is 
the  substance  of  poetry,  and  made  it  the 
substance  of  the  drama.  He  sympathized 
with  great  passions;  and  in  order  to  sympa- 
thize with  them  he  had  first  to  be  capable 
of  great  passions;  that  was  his  endowment. 
The  first  and  abiding  impression  he  makes 
upon  the  reader  is  that  of  power,  —  of  the 
presence  in  his  bosom  of  the  Dionysiac 
daemonic  force  that  I  spoke  of  the  other  night, 
of  that  marvellous  life-might  clothing  itself 
in  restless  creative  faculty  and  calling  new 
worlds  into  being  in  the  intellectual  sphere. 
He  was  a  creator,  and  the  clay  he  used  was 
humanity,  the  human  spirit,  the  soul.  The 
Renaissance  restored  to  man  the  dignity  of 
human  nature,  gave  the  human  spirit  back 


44  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

to  itself  as  a  power  of  life.  It  unveiled  the 
great  achievement  of  antiquity  in  literature, 
in  sculpture  and  architecture,  in  empire,  and, 
perhaps  most  notably  of  all,  in  men.  Noth- 
ing is  more  significant  of  the  mood  of  the 
age  than  the  regard  in  which  Plutarch  was 
held.  Plutarch  was,  as  it  were,  a  resur- 
rection of  the  mighty  dead  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  The  human  soul  had  been  capable 
of  such  lives,  and  of  such  works  as  the  poets 
and  philosophers  and  artists  had  wrought 
in  classical  times.  The  example  was  like 
a  trumpet  call;  what  man  had  done  and 
been,  man  could  still  be  and  do.  The  ro- 
mantic nations,  Italy,  France,  Spain,  and 
England,  broke  into  sudden  flower  of  litera- 
ture and  art  and  life,  as  when  the  sun  in  its 
northing  clothes  the  whole  hemisphere  with 
springtime,  and  the  force  of  nature  is  un- 
loosed like  a  flood,  and  belts  the  planet  with 
new  warmth  and  verdure.  It  is  this  unloos- 
ing of  human  faculty  that  characterizes  the 
age;  it  was  a  broader  phenomenon  than  we 
are  apt  to  think;  Shakspere  was  but  an  in- 
cident in  it. 

This  force  was  unloosed  in  Marlowe;    to 


MARLOWE  45 

him,  in  his  awakening,  came  the  sense  of  the 
greatness  of  man,  the  miracle  of  human 
power,  the  desire  to  possess  his  soul  of  this 
greatness,  to  be  in  himself  this  miracle, — the 
passion  of  life.  Young  scholar  though  he 
was  and  hardly  fledged  from  college,  he  had 
got  more  than  an  education;  he  had  found 
his  mind.  If  he  wrote  a  book  against  the 
Trinity,  as  was  alleged,  it  is  a  fact  that  is 
certainly  not  recorded  of  any  other  of  his  fel- 
lows, and  shows  a  philosophical  interest, 
a  mentality,  different  in  kind  from  theirs. 
He  was  endowed  with  sensuousness  and  the 
warm  delight  in  beauty,  that  is  the  rarest  of 
English  poetic  traits  and  little  welcome  in 
that  sluggish  climate;  he  was  also  endowed 
with  mind;  but  beneath  both  endowments 
lay  that  deep  desire  to  live,  that  conscious- 
ness of  the  power  to  live,  that  passion  to 
realize  his  desire  in  power,  and  for  which  there 
was  no  other  pathway  for  him  than  the  roads 
of  the  imagination.  It  was  natural  that 
what  was  most  borne  in  upon  his  mind,  the 
greatness  of  man  and  the  presence  in  man's 
soul  of  all  that  potent  faculty  of  which 
Greece  and  Rome  and  Italy  were  the  form 


46  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

and  impression,  of  which  the  freshly  opened 
lands  and  seas,  east  and  west,  bore  the 
promise  of  new  world-careers,  —  it  was  nat- 
ural, I  say,  that  this  height  of  human  nature 
which  was  foremost  in  his  sense  of  life  should 
be  cardinal  in  his  imaginative  brooding 
whence  issued  the  romantic  dreams  of  his 
mind. 

He  first  seized  on  the  most  obvious  em- 
bodiment of  human  greatness,  military  em- 
pire, and  on  the  prime  barbaric  passion, 
lust  of  dominion,  —  on  power  in  its  most 
simple  and  sensual  form,  the  power  of  the 
conqueror;  he  set  forth  in  "  Tamburlaine "  the 
career  of  resistless  victory  ridden  by  a  master 
of  the  world.  Tamburlaine  himself  proclaims 
that  mastery  of  inexhaustible  ambition  which 
is  proper  to  man :  — 

"Nature  that  framed  us  of  four  elements, 
Warring  within  our  breasts  for  regiment, 
Doth  teach  us  all  to  have  aspiring  minds : 
Our  souls,  whose  faculties  can  comprehend 
The  wondrous  architecture  of  the  world, 
And  measure  every  wandering  planet's  course, 
Still  climbing  after  knowledge  infinite, 
And  always  moving  as  the  restless  spheres, 
Wills  us  to  wear  ourselves  and  never  rest, 


MARLOWE  47 

Until  we  reach  the  ripest  fruit  of  all, 

That  perfect  bliss  and  sole  felicity, 

The  sweet  fruition  of  an  earthly  crown." 

For  Tamburlaine  the  crown  was  the  summit, 
but  in  the  larger  yearning  of  the  speech,  in 
such  a  line  as 

"  Still  climbing  after  knowledge  infinite," 

is  the  keynote  of  Marlowe's  mood  in  all 
ways.  The  drama  itself  is  an  unchecked 
torrent  of  words,  a  flood  of  large  language;  it 
has  an  imperial  breadth  of  flow,  and  bears 
the  kingdoms  like  islands  on  its  stream.  It 
has  become  a  synonym  for  bombast,  but  it 
excites  and  amplifies  the  imagination  by  its 
spaciousness,  its  epithets  like  "  the  hundred- 
headed  Volga,"  and  its  terrible  energy. 
There  are  many  splendid  passages  of  im- 
passioned diction,  many  noble  lines  such  as 
only  the  greatest  masters  know  the  secret 
of;  but  I  can  best  convey  to  you  that  quality 
which  I  wish  to  bring  out  —  the  new  Eliza- 
bethan sense  of  the  largeness  of  the  earth 
and  of  the  dream  of  empire  over  it  —  by 
the  scene  in  which  Tamburlaine  at  his 
death  calls  for  the  map  of  the  world. 


48  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

"  But  I  perceive  my  martial  strength  is  spent. 
In  vain  I  strive  and  rail  against  those  powers 
That  mean  to  invest  me  in  a  higher  throne  .  .  . 
Give  me  a  map ;  then  let  me  see  how  much 
Is  left  for  me  to  conquer  all  the  world  .  .  . 
Here  I  began  to  march  toward  Persia, 
Along  Armenia  and  the  Caspian  Sea, 
And  thence  unto  Bithynia,  where  I  took 
The  Turk  and  his  great  empress  prisoners. 
Thence  marched  I  into  Egypt  and  Arabia ; 
And  here,  not  far  from  Alexandria, 
Whereas  the  Terrene  and  the  Red  Sea  meet, 
Being  distant  less  than  full  a  hundred  leagues, 
I  meant  to  cut  a  channel  to  them  both, 
That  men  might  quickly  sail  to  India. 
From  thence  to  Nubia  near  Borno  lake, 
And  so  along  the  iEthiopean  Sea, 
Cutting  the  tropic  line  of  Capri  con, 
I  conquered  all  as  far  as  Zanzibar. 
Then  by  the  northern  part  of  Africa, 
I  came  at  last  to  Graecia,  and  from  thence 
To  Asia,  where  I  stay  against  my  will :  — 
Which  is,  from  Scythia  where  I  first  began, 
Backwards  and  forwards,  near  five  thousand  leagues. 
Look  here,  my  boys ;  see  what  a  world  of  ground 
Lies  westward  from  the  midst  of  Cancer's  line 
Unto  the  rising  of  this  earthly  globe ; 
Whereas  the  sun,  declining  from  our  sight, 
Begins  the  day  with  our  Antipodes  ! 
And  shall  I  die,  and  this  unconquered  ? 
Lo,  here,  my  sons,  are  all  the  golden  mines, 


MARLOWE  49 

Inestimable  drugs  and  precious  stones, 
More  worth  than  Asia  and  the  world  beside ; 
And  from  the  Antarctic  Pole  eastward  behold 
As  much  more  land,  which  never  was  descried, 
Wherein  are  rocks  of  pearl  that  shine  as  bright 
As  all  the  lamps  that  beautify  the  sky ! 
And  shall  I  die,  and  this  unconquered  ?  " 

In  this  passage  we  are  in  the  world  that 
Columbus  and  the  great  voyagers  discovered, 
and  breathe  its  air  as  fresh  as  in  those 
Elizabethan  mornings  when  the  wonder  was 
still  on  it. 

In  "The  Jew  of  Malta  "  Marlowe  selected 
the  second  primary  passion  of  man,  the 
lust  for  gold,  and  he  made  Barabas  a  type 
of  the  love  of  wealth,  as  prodigal  as  was 
Tamburlaine  of  the  love  of  empire.  He 
it  was  from  whose   lips  dropped    the  line 

"Infinite  riches  in  a  little  room," 

and  illustrated  it  by  that  glittering  hoard 
which  shows  in  fewest  words  the  lavishness 
that  is  a  constant  trait  of  Marlowe :  — 

"  Bags  of  fiery  opals,  sapphires,  amethysts, 
Jacinths,  hard  topaz,  grass-green  emeralds, 
Beauteous  rubies,  sparkling  diamonds, 
And  seld-seen  costly  stones  of  so  great  price 


50  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

As  one  of  them  indifferently  rated  .  .  . 

May  serve  in  peril  of  calamity 

To  ransom  great  kings  from  captivity." 

The  passion  of  the  Jew,  like  that  of  the 
conqueror,  is  single  and  alone.  Marlowe 
desired  a  more  unlimited  play  for  the  soul's 
infinite  capacity,  and  in  "Doctor  Faustus" 
he  showed  that  multiple  thirst,  which  was 
the  very  image  of  the  Renaissance,  that 
thirst  to  exhaust  all  natures  by  possessing 
them,  which  only  the  secrets  of  magic  could 
satisfy  and  allay,  but  which  was  a  passion  so 
deep-seated  that  the  scholar  would  barter 
his  soul  in  exchange  for  that  means  of  power. 
At  this  price  Faustus  obtained  the  satis- 
faction of  every  wish  and  was  as  supreme  in 
this  empire  of  the  mind  as  Tamburlaine  had 
been  in  the  kingdoms  of  the  world. 

Infinite  empire,  infinite  riches,  infinite 
satisfaction  of  desire,  are  thus  the  three  great 
themes  of  Marlowe,  in  these  most  character- 
istic plays;  the  desire,  the  passion,  and  the 
power  of  life  on  a  grand  scale  filled  his  mind, 
and  gave  his  imagination  that  grandiloquence 
which  is  the  trait  by  which  he  is  most  eminent 
in  men's  memories.     He  had  thus  discovered 


MARLOWE  51 

passion  as  the  substance  of  the  drama,  and 
had  created  great  embodiments  of  it  in 
characters  that  remain  types  never  to  be 
forgotten  of  the  passion  he  delineated  in 
each.  To  put  the  fact  in  a  different  way, 
he  was  the  first  great  psychologist  in  Eng- 
lish drama;  he  created  psychology  in  it  as  a 
dramatic  theme.  He  conceived  these  primary 
passions  somewhat  simply  and  abstractly, 
elementally;  but  in  these  plays  he  had  al- 
ready begun  to  find  the  counterfoil  to  pas- 
sion, which  is  the  other  half  of  dramatic  art, 
namely,  the  event;  and  as  he  went  on  in 
his  art,  and  grasped  the  interplay  of  pas- 
sion and  circumstance  which  makes  tragedy 
whole  and  complete  as  an  image  of  human 
life,  he  guided  the  art  into  its  proper  ele- 
ment, history.  That  was  his  second  great 
achievement  as  a  fashioner  of  the  drama 
in  his  day.  In  the  earlier  plays  he  had 
given  passion  its  career  in  an  ideal  world;  in 
"  Edward  II"  he  seized  upon  it  in  its  con- 
fining bounds  of  history,  and  his  work  at 
once  gained  complexity  and  reality,  or  what 
is  called  probability;  it  became  lifelike. 
It  must  be  acknowledged  that  there  is  more 


52  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

vitality  in  "  Edward  II "  than  in  Shakspere's 
more  expert  development  of  the  same  theme 
in  "Richard  II."  Richard  suffers  in  his 
imagination,  in  his  kingship,  in  his  idea  of 
himself;  but  Edward  suffers  in  his  heart, 
and  is  in  all  ways  warmer,  tenderer,  more 
manly.  It  was  by  this  resort  to  history  as 
the  element  of  human  drama  that  Marlowe 
obtained  this  vitality  in  the  characters  and 
actuality  in  the  events;  and  by  his  example 
he  put  into  Shakspere's  hands  his  prentice 
work  in  the  historical  plays,  as  he  had  already 
directed  his  interest  to  the  psychology  of 
the  human  spirit  and  the  career  of  great 
passions  in  exalted  types  of  the  imagination. 
Marlowe  was  in  these  ways  the  forerunner, 
not  only  of  Shakspere,  but  of  the  dramatic 
age. 

Marlowe  performed  another  service,  not 
only  for  the  drama,  but  for  English  literature, 
and  one  that  is  forever  associated  with  his 
name.  He  gave  to  English  poetry  its  best 
instrument  of  expression,  —  blank  verse.  It 
is  true  that  blank  verse  had  been  used  before 
and  upon  the  stage;  but  it  was  Marlowe's 
distinction  to  develop  the  melody  and  rheto- 


MARLOWE  53 

ric  of  blank  verse,  to  give  it  eloquence, 
ardor,  and  passion,  to  make  it  throb  and 
live;  and  from  him,  again,  Shakspere  took  it 
and  through  successive  years  molded  and 
shaped  it,  made  it  flexible  and  plastic,  till 
it  became  the  most  vital  form  of  English 
speech.  In  Marlowe  the  line  is  still  in  its 
elementary  stage;  its  value  is  there,  but  its 
value  is  often  too  exclusively  a  monotone  and 
too  frequently  merely  sonorous;  the  repeti- 
tion is  tedious,  the  sound  is  swelling  and 
bombastic;  on  the  other  hand,  it  should  be 
remembered  that  this  sounding  and  gorgeous 
oratory,  together  with  the  eloquence  and 
rhetoric,  the  excess  of  rich  detail,  the  pic- 
turesqueness  and  ornament,  the  lavish  fancy, 
all  taken  in  one,  was  a  means  of  securing  that 
illusion  of  the  imagination  of  which  the  bare 
and  ill-furnished  scenic  stage  of  Elizabeth 
stood  so  greatly  in  need.  In  a  certain  way 
this  ranting  and  profuse  language  was  a 
substitute  for  scenery,  and  helped  to  give  the 
necessary  elevation  to  the  mimic  stage.  In 
his  employment  of  blank  verse,  too,  Marlowe 
showed  the  same  rapid  progress  in  the  power 
of  his  art  that  distinguished  him  in  charac- 


54  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

terization  and  in  plot;  and  as  he  became 
accustomed  to  the  measure,  he  dissolved 
its  original  monotone,  broke  it  up  into  true 
melody,  while  at  the  same  time  he  gathered 
temperance  and  kept  nearer  to  the  natural 
language  of  high  passion,  as  in  the  great 
scenes  of  "  Edward  II "  and  of  "  Doctor 
Faustus."  In  all  this,  as  in  the  rest  of  his 
art,  he  was  a  bold  experimenter  and  learned 
by  doing;  but  just  as  there  was  a  gift  of 
nature  which  underlay  his  sympathy  with 
great  passions,  that  Dionysiac  daemonic  force 
within  himself,  so  there  was  a  gift  of  nature 
beneath  his  "  mighty  line."  Style,  the  power 
and  the  feeling  for  noble  language,  was  born 
in  him;  that  aliquid  immensum  infinitumque 
that  Cicero  desired  in  the  orator  was  innate 
in  Marlowe;  it  was  not  merely  the  large 
words  and  rolling  cadences  upon  his  lips, 
but  throughout  the  poet's  make  there  was 
the  sense  and  feeling  of  the  infinite,  seen  at 
the  lowest  in  the  profusion  of  his  fancy,  and 
at  the  highest  in  the  reach  of  his  imagination 
in  his  great  tragic  scenes,  but  most  apparent 
and  condensed  perhaps  in  that  passage  on 
poetic  expression  which  no  lover  of  Mar- 


MARLOWE  55 

lowe  can  forbear  to  quote,  though  it  be 
familiar :  — 

"If  all  the  pens  that  ever  poets  held 
Had  fed  the  feeling  of  their  masters'  thoughts, 
And  every  sweetness  that  inspired  their  hearts, 
Their  minds,  and  muses  on  admired  themes ; 
If  all  the  heavenly  quintessence  they  still 
From  their  immortal  flowers  of  poesy 
Wherein,  as  in  a  mirror,  we  perceive 
The  highest  reaches  of  a  human  wit :  — 
If  these  had  made  one  poem's  period, 
And  all  combined  in  beauty's  worthiness, 
Yet  should  there  hover  in  their  restless  heads 
One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least, 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest." 

The  feeling  of  the  inexpressible,  which  is  in 
literature  the  sense  of  the  infinite,  was  never 
told  with  more  heart-felt  conviction  than  in 
these  lines.  The  style  of  Marlowe,  as  lofty 
as  it  is  rich,  where  every  line  brims  to  the 
rim  with  melody  or  beauty  or  high  feeling, 
is  such  as  belongs  to  the  man.  It  was 
Shakspere's  best  fortune  that  he  caught  the 
golden  cadence  of  his  youth  from  such  a 
master's  lips. 

Marlowe  died  at  the  age  of  thirty,  and  left 
this  memory  of  himself  which  for  splendor 


56  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

and  beauty  is  fitly  symbolized  by  the  image 
of  the  morning  star  which  has  been  so  freely 
applied  to  him.  It  is  not  because  of  the  per- 
fection of  his  works  that  he  is  remembered; 
he  left  no  single  work  of  the  first  rank;  a 
developed  art  is  the  prerequisite  of  great 
literature.  He  did  not  so  much  create  great 
works  as  he  rather  originated  the  art  itself 
by  which  great  works  should  in  their  time 
be  accomplished.  I  have  indicated  the 
specific  service  he  thus  rendered  by  concen- 
trating the  drama  on  passion,  by  sending  it 
to  history  to  school,  and  by  giving  it  the  in- 
strument of  blank  verse;  but  I  have  not 
meant  thereby  to  trace  his  historical  sig- 
nificance, but  to  show  forth  more  fully  the 
strength  that  was  in  him,  the  immense 
poetic  energy  of  which  his  genius  was  the 
phenomenon.  He  had  the  warmth  and 
susceptibility  of  a  youthful  poet,  but  he  had 
also  a  greatness  of  soul  which  we  associate 
with  more  manly  years.  He  was  an  emana- 
tion of  the  Renaissance,  one  of  that  new 
brood  of  men  which  was  like  a  new  creation 
in  the  ranks  of  the  angels  of  power.  He  was 
a  forward-looking  spirit;    no  fibre  in  him 


MARLOWE  57 

looked  backward  to  the  past;  he  was  revo- 
lutionary. He  was  full  of  mastership ;  no  part 
of  his  nature  went  in  leash  to  any  power 
in  heaven  or  on  earth;  he  was  free.  He  was 
lawless,  even,  as  it  is  the  lot  of  genius  to  be 
because  of  the  prophetic  element  in  it  by 
which  it  belongs  to  a  world  not  yet  come  into 
being.  More  than  any  of  his  fellows,  more 
even  than  Shakspere  to  me,  he  seems  self- 
absorbed  in  his  own  other  world  of  imagina- 
tive art,  and  living  there  as  in  his  own  bright, 
particular  star.  He  is  the  very  type  of  gen- 
ius, as  I  have  said,  —  the  naked  form  of  it, 
—  as  bright,  as  beautiful,  as  neglectful  of 
mankind,  as  free  from  any  regards  of  earth 
as  an  antique  statue  that  gives  to  our  eyes 
the  mortal  aspect  of  a  god. 


Ill 

CAMOENS 

Camoens,  the  maker  of  the  only  truly 
modern  epic,  offers  an  illustration  of  poetic 
power  which  is  to  me  one  of  the  most  interest- 
ing, although  the  foreignness  of  his  subject- 
matter  and  the  extraordinary  lameness  of 
its  English  translations  make  difficult  ob- 
stacles to  our  appreciation ;  but  for  that  very 
reason  he  has  the  happiest  fortune  that  can 
fall  to  a  poet  in  the  fact  that  familiarity  ever 
endears  him  the  more.  He  is  a  less  pure 
type  of  the  flame  of  genius  than  Marlowe; 
poetic  energy  appears  in  him  less  a  spiritual 
power  dwelling  in  its  own  realm  of  imagina- 
tion; but,  on  the  other  hand,  his  career  ad- 
mits us  to  a  nearer  view  of  a  poet's  human 
life,  to  what  actually  befalls  the  man  so 
doubtfully  endowed  with  that  inward  pas- 
sion of  life,  in  the  days  and  weeks  and  years 
of  his  journey.  Scarce  any  poet  is  so  auto- 
biographical   in    the    strict    sense.     Others 

58 


CAMOENS  59 

have  made  themselves  the  subject  of  their 
song;  but  usually,  like  Shelley,  they  exhibit 
an  ideal  self  seen  under  imaginative  lights 
and  through  the  soul's  atmosphere,  and  in 
these  self-portraits  half  the  lines  are  aspira- 
tion realized,  the  self  they  dream  of;  but 
Camoens  shows  in  his  verse  as  he  was  in 
life,  with  a  naturalness  and  vigor,  with  an 
unconscious  realism,  a  directness,  an  in- 
tensity and  openness  that  give  him  to  us  as 
a  comrade. 

He  was  of  the  old  blue  blood  of  the  Penin- 
sula, the  Gothic  blood,  the  same  that  gave 
birth  to  Cervantes.  He  was  blond,  and 
bright-haired,  with  blue  eyes,  large  and 
lively,  the  face  oval  and  ruddy,  —  and  in 
manhood  the  beard  short  and  rounded,  with 
long  untrimmed  mustachios, — the  forehead 
high,  the  nose  aquiline;  in  figure  agile  and 
robust;  in  action  "  quick  to  draw  and  slow  to 
sheathe/'  and  when  he  was  young,  he  writes 
that  he  had  seen  the  heels  of  many,  but  none 
had  seen  his  heels.  Born  about  the  year 
1524,  of  a  noble  and  well-connected  family, 
educated  at  Coimbra,  a  university  famous 
for  the  classics,  and  launched  in  life  about 


60  THE  INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

the  court  at  Lisbon,  he  was  no  sooner  his 
own  master  than  he  fell  into  troubles.  He 
was  a  lover  born,  and  the  name  of  his  lady, 
Caterina,  is  the  first  that  emerges  in  his  life; 
for  such  Romeo-daring  he  was  banished 
from  court  when  he  was  about  twenty, 
whether  after  a  duel  or  a  stolen  interview 
is  uncertain;  and  on  his  return,  since  he 
continued  faithful  to  his  lady,  he  was  sent 
into  Africa,  and  in  an  engagement  with  pi- 
rates in  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  he  lost  his 
right  eye.  He  fought  the  Moors  for  three 
years  until  he  was  twenty-five,  and  returning 
to  Lisbon,  enlisted  for  the  Indies;  but  in  con- 
sequence of  a  street  affair  with  swords  in 
which  he  drew  in  defence  of  some  masked 
ladies  and  unfortunately  wounded  a  palace 
servant,  he  was  held  in  prison  three  years. 
Eleven  days  after  his  release  he  sailed, 
and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  his  sailing  was  a 
condition  of  his  release.  He  rounded  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  came  to  India, 
where  he  served  in  campaigns  and  garrison, 
and  occasionally  held  official  appointments, 
and  from  time  to  time  fell  into  prison.  He 
cleared  himself  from  all  charges  of  wrong- 


CAMOENS  61 

doing  in  office;  but  he  was  of  the  type  that 
makes  both  enemies  and  friends.  He  was 
outspoken,  and  he'  indulged  his  mood  in 
satire,  a  dangerous  employment  in  the  nar- 
rowness of  colonial  and  army  life.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  was  a  brave  and  gentle  com- 
rade and  delighted  in  manly  traits;  and  so 
there  was  a  round  of  companions  in  arms  to 
whom  he  was  dear.  He  served  far  and  wide, 
fought  on  the  coasts  of  the  Red  Sea,  win- 
tered in  Ormuz  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  spent 
some  years  in  China,  and  seems  to  have 
visited  the  Malay  islands;  once  he  was 
shipwrecked  on  the  Chinese  coast.  It  is 
clear  that  he  roamed  the  Orient  on  all  the 
lines  of  travel  and  enterprise,  of  commerce 
and  war,  wherever  the  Portuguese  ships 
could  sail,  and  bore  throughout  the  name 
and  character  of  a  gentleman-adventurer 
of  that  world,  a  daring,  enterprising,  hope- 
ful, unfortunate,  and  often  distressed  man. 
Sixteen  years  of  his  manhood  passed  in 
these  toils,  — 

"  In  one  hand  aye  the  Sword,  in  one  the  Pen," 

—  along   the   tropical  seas   and   under   the 
alien  skies;  for  from  the  first,  even  before 


62  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

in  his  youth  he  planted  a  lance  in  Africa, 
he  had  held  to  his  breast  that  little  manu- 
script book  where  year  by  year,  on  the  deck 
and  the  gun-breech,  in  his  grotto  at  Macao, 
in  prison,  wherever  he  might  be  and  under 
whatever  aspect  of  fortune,  he  wrote  down 
the  growing  lines  of  that  poem  which  is  now 
the  chief  glory  of  his  native  land.  When  he 
was  shipwrecked  in  China,  he  lost  the  little 
store  of  gold  that  he  had  accumulated  in  the 
office  which  he  was  recalled  from,  but  he 
held  safe  this  book,  — 

"  In  his  embrace  the  song  that  swam  to  land 
From  sad  and  piteous  shipwreck  dripping  wet 
'Scaped  from  the  reefs  and  rocks  that  fang  the 
strand." 

Now,  after  sixteen  years,  nostalgia,  not 
simple  homesickness,  but  the  nostalgia  of  him 
who  fares  forth  into  the  world  and  voyages 
long  in  stranger-lands,  had  fallen  on  him,  and 
was  heavy  in  all  his  spirit.  He  had  left 
Portugal,  indignantly  saying  that  his  country 
should  not  possess  his  bones;  but  he  had 
long  changed  this  temper,  — 

'  Tagus  yet  pcaleth  with  the  passion  caught 
From  the  wild  cry  he  flung  across  the  sea" ;  — 


CAMOENS  63 

all  his  hopes  had  really  rested  on  the  honor 
of  the  song  he  had  built  up  for  the  glory  of 
Portugal,  and  while  everything  else  that  men 
name  success  faded  away  and  escaped  him, 
with  this  poem  surely  he  would  find  welcome 
home.  He  stopped  at  Mozambique  with  the 
captain '  governor,  and  when  he  wished  to 
continue  his  voyage,  this  officer,  who  was  his 
host,  consigned  him  to  prison  for  a  debt 
due  himself,  a  small  sum.  Soon  afterwards, 
however,  a  ship  came  by,  with  a  dozen  of 
Camoens'  old  messmates  and  friends,  vet- 
erans, and  they  contributed  the  money  for 
his  release.  So,  says  the  old  biographer, 
"were  simultaneously  sold  the  person  of 
Camoens  and  the  honor  of  Pedro  Barreto" 
for  £25.  With  these  friends  Camoens  sailed 
homeward,  and  arrived  safely,  but  not  to 
find  prosperity.  It  was  three  years  before 
his  book  was  published;  and  he  received  for 
reward  only  a  pension  of  about  one  hundred 
dollars  in  our  money  at  its  present  worth, 
and  this  was  not  often  paid.  The  entire 
eight  years  of  his  life  at  Lisbon  were  filled 
with  such  poverty  and  distress  as  we  re- 
member of  the  last  dying  days  of  Spenser 


64  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

and  Chatterton.  He  lived  some  part  of  this 
time  in  a  religious  house,  that  is,  an  alms- 
house; at  other  times  his  Javanese  servant, 
who  had  stayed  with  him,  begged  food  for  him 
at  night,  but  the  faithful  servant  died  before 
his  wretched  master/  Even  among  the 
poets  few  have  been  so  homeless  and  desti- 
tute as  Camoens  in  his  life's  end,  now  going 
about  on  crutches  and  suffering  the  last  sad 
effects  of  a  hard-faring  life.  It  was  the 
moment  just  before  his  death  when  the 
power  of  Portugal  was  extinguished  on  the 
battle-field  by  Philip  of  Spain:  "I  die," 
he  wrote  to  a  friend,  "not  only  in  my  country, 
but  with  it."  The  time  of  his  death  is 
uncertain,  but  he  was  about  fifty-five  years 
old.  He  died  in  a  hospital.  "  I  saw  him 
die,"  says  an  old  Carmelite  brother,  "in 
the  hospital  of  Lisbon,  without  a  sheet  where- 
with to  cover  himself."  Such  in  its  ex- 
ternal events  was  the  life-story  of  Camoens. 
If  one  throws  upon  this  harsh  narrative 
the  light  that  flows  from  Camoens'  poetry, 
the  lines  are  softened  in  the  retrospect;  the 
hardship  and  misfortune  are  seen  in  that  at- 
mosphere of  melancholy  that  pervades  his 


CAMOENS  65 

strong  verse  and  blends  with  it,  as  tender- 
ness companions  valor  in  the  man  himself. 
To  see  properly  the  phases  of  his  genius,  one 
should  glance  first  at  the  lyrical  works,  and 
especially  the  sonnets,  that  preceded  and 
accompanied  the  heroic  verse  of  the  epic. 
From  his  student  days  at  the  university, 
unlike  Marlowe,  he  was  the  heir  of  a  devel- 
oped art,  and  in  all  his  work  is  seen  the  fair 
background  of  the  poetic  tradition,  —  in 
the  epic  the  forms  of  old  mythology,  and  in 
the  lyrics  the  Italian  example  of  Petrarch. 
To  him  his  lady  Caterina  was  what  Pe- 
trarch's Laura  had  been,  an  ideal  of  hopeless 
and  pure  passion.  Her  personality  is  not 
definitely  known,  but  she  married  and  died 
while  still  young.  Though  in  his  sonnets  to 
her  Camoens  followed  the  poetic  tradition, 
the  reality  of  his  devotion  cannot  be  doubted 
in  its  inception;  and  in  its  continuance 
through  the  years  of  his  youth,  and  especially 
of  his  long  exile  in  the  Orient,  this  ideal  pas- 
sion stood  for  him,  at  least,  as  the  sign  and 
certainty  of  his  first  failure  —  his  failure  in 
love.  It  became,  perhaps,  after  long  and 
hopeless  years  simply  the  cry  of  his  imagi- 


66  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

nation,  but  it  had  its  original  being  in  the 
call  of  the  heart.  Very  sweet  and  noble, 
though  conventional,  is  his  early  pleading :  — 

"  Beautiful  eyes,  whereof  the  sunny  sphere 
When  most  with  cloudless  clarity  of  light 
The  infinite  expanse  he  maketh  bright, 
Doubting  to  be  eclipsed,  doth  stand  in  fear : 
If  I  am  held  in  scorn  who  hold  you  dear, 
Then,  having  of  all  things  such  perfect  sight, 
Consider  this  thing  too,  that  mortal  night 
To  cover  up  your  beauty  draweth  near. 
Gather,  O  gather  with  unstaying  hand, 
The  fruits  that  must  together  gathered  be, 
Occasion  ripe,  and  Passion's  clasp  divine. 
And,  since  by  you  I  live  and  die,  command 
Love,  that  he  yield  his  tribute  unto  me, 
Who  unto  you  have  freely  yielded  mine." 

After  years  of  vain  castle-building  during 
which  he  seemed  his  "own  sorrow's  archi- 
tect," and  in  that  wide  roaming  which  he 
describes,  — 

"  Now  scattering  my  music  as  I  pass, 
The  world  I  range,  — 

he  still  kept  true  to  the  lover's  creed :  — 

"  All  evils  Love  can  wreak  behold  in  me, 
In  whom  the  utmost  of  his  power  malign 
lie  willed  unto  the  world  to  manifest: 


CAMOENS  67 

But  I,  like  him,  would  have  these  things  to  be. 

Lifted  by  woe  to  ecstasy  divine, 

I  would  not  change  for  all  the  world  possest." 

When  his  lady  died,  he  lifted  his  prayer  in 
his  loveliest  and  most  famous  sonnet:  — 

"  Soul  of  my  soul,  that  didst  so  early  wing 
From  our  poor  world  thou  heldest  in  disdain, 
Bound  be  I  ever  to  my  mortal  pain, 
So  thou  hast  peace  before  the  Eternal  King ! 
If  to  the  realms  where  thou  dost  soar  and  sing 
Remembrance  of  aught  earthly  may  attain, 
Forget  not  the  deep  love  thou  did'st  so  fain 
Discover  my  fond  eyes  inhabiting. 
And  if  my  yearning  heart  unsatisfied, 
And  pang  on  earth  incurable  have  might 
To  profit  thee  and  me,  pour  multiplied 
Thy  meek  entreaties  to  the  Lord  of  Light, 
That  swiftly  He  would  raise  me  to  thy  side, 
As  suddenly  He  rapt  thee  from  my  sight." 

In  these  sonnets  and  other  lyrical  poems 
the  poet  is  hardly  more  personal  than  in 
the  heroic  epic,  but  his  personality  is  more 
exclusively  felt,  and  the  topics  are  not 
confined  to  his  love.  The  most  lasting 
impression  made  is  of  the  passing  of  hope 
out  of  his  life.  Camoens  was  one  of  those 
souls  who  are  great  in  hope;    and  he  often 


68  THE   INSPIRATION   OF   POETRY 

bent  upon  the  past  reverted  eyes,  and  drew 
the  sum  of  his  losses,  ending  in  that 
refrain  — 

"For  Death  and  Disenchantment  all  was  made  — 
Woe  unto  all  that  hope !  to  all  that  trust ! " 

The  vein  of  melancholy  in  the  lyrical  poems 
opens  the  tenderness  of  Camoens,  and  per- 
haps the  softer  note  is  somewhat  over- 
charged in  these  admirable  but  rather  Ital- 
ianated  versions  of  Dr.  Garnett's  that  I  have 
used;  life-weariness  and  profound  discour- 
agement, indeed,  there  is  in  them;  but  they 
are  not  the  simple  outflow  of  a  Petrarchan 
lover's  complaint,  but  the  sorrows  of  a  much- 
toiling  man ;  for  Camoens  was  both  sailor  and 
soldier,  and  as  natural  to  those  ways  of  labor 
as  to  the  handling  of  the  lute.  The  voyage, 
the  march,  and  the  battle  made  up  the  larger 
part  of  his  life. 

This  opens  the  second  trait  to  be  observed 
in  the  phases  of  his  development,  namely, 
his  absorption  of  the  patriotic  vitality  of 
his  country.  It  is  true  that  he  inherited  a 
developed  and  conventionalized  art,  and  had 
always    that    fair    background    of    classical 


CAMOENS  69 

figures  and  Italian  atmosphere  which  were 
his  portion  of  the  Renaissance;  but  the  Re- 
naissance was  rather  like  a  little  mountain 
city  where  he  was  born  and  drank  his  youth; 
he  did  not  abide  there,  but  came  down  into 
the  great  modern  world  that  was  then  to  be, 
—  the  world  of  the  waste  of  waters  and  the 
spreading  empires.  Portugal  played  a  great 
part  in  that  age  which  broke  the  horizon 
bars  and  passed  the  western  and  the  eastern 
limit  of  the  sun  alike,  and  made  the  fleets 
as  free  of  the  ocean  as  the  sea-birds  of  every 
wandering  wave.  Camoens  was  to  make 
this  the  great  theme  of  his  song.  —  the  ocean 
fame  of  Portugal.  But  he  was  inducted 
into  his  passion  of  patriotism  by  natural 
ways,  before  the  glory  of  the  ocean  discoveries 
was  fully  opened  in  his  mind.  Portugal, 
you  remember,  was  the  child  of  battle,  born 
of  the  conflict  of  the  Christian  and  the  Moor; 
on  the  stricken  field  she  found  her  crown 
itself,  and  became  a  state:  and  In  maintain- 
ing the  struggle  that  drove  the  Crescent 
back  into  Africa,  and  in  following  across  the 
straits  to  free  the  seaboard,  she  developed 
her  strength,  laid  up  her  most  heroic  memo- 


70  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

ries,  and  built  those  navies  that  were  to  open 
and  command  so  many  seas. 

When  Camoens  in  his  youth  fought  his 
first  campaigns  in  Africa,  he  was  united  with 
his  country's  cause  and  honor  in  its  great  his- 
toric current,  and  it  was  by  nature  that  there 
flamed  up  in  him  that  national  pride,  hating 
and  triumphing  over  the  Moor,  which  is  the 
historic  substance  of  his  epic.  He  had  found 
his  theme  in  battling  with  the  Moorish  power. 
The  realization  of  this  theme,  the  patriotic  past 
of  his  country,  was  the  second  phase  of  his 
development.  Then  came,  with  his  long  and 
perilous  voyage  and  his  years  of  wanderings 
through  all  the  picturesque  coasts  of  the  East, 
that  expansion  and  enrichment  of  his  theme 
which  reduced  the  original  Moorish  battle  to 
the  rank  of  episode  and  background,  while 
the  maritime  greatness  of  Portugal,  set 
forth  in  the  story  of  the  voyage  of  Da  Gama 
round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  as  the  main 
action,  became  the  more  prominent  subject. 
The  poem  itself  yields  these  three  main 
elements  corresponding  to  the  division  that 
has  been  made:  the  background  of  classical 
mythology,  which  affords  the  mechanism  of 


CAMOENS  71 

the  plot,  and  is  of  the  Renaissance;  the  his- 
tory of  Portugal  which  affords  the  time  per- 
spectives and  the  main  episodes;  and  lastly 
the  fortunes  of  Da  Gama.  The  poem  thus 
grew  with  Camoens'  own  growth,  and  con- 
tains his  artistic  training  in  the  school  of 
Renaissance  tradition,  his  youthful  African 
marches  and  raids,  and  his  manhood  voyages. 
He  made  it  embrace  the  whole  glory  of  Por- 
tugal, compressed  into  its  stanzas  all  her  ro- 
mance, heroism,  and  fable  from  the  earliest 
record  in  antique  days  to  his  own  hour,  spread 
in  it  the  naval  dominion  of  her  great  contem- 
porary age;  and  he  did  this,  not  as  a  reminis- 
cent scholar  in  Virgil's  way  or  Tasso's  way, 
but  as  one  who  had  labored  in  the  glorious 
action  by  sea  and  land,  near  the  port  and  far 
in  the  open,  boy  and  man,  with  sword  and 
pen.  The  enthusiasm  of  a  lifetime  here 
gathers  and  gives  out  the  passion  of  a  whole 
nation  and  makes  a  people's  glory  one  with 
the  poet's  fame.  The  "Lusiads"  is  the 
principal  monument  of  Portugal,  and  the 
chief  national  bond  that  binds  her  children 
in  one. 

It  is  this  infusion  of  personality  —  and 


72  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

personality  like  Marlowe's  of  the  daring 
Renaissance  type  —  which  makes  the  "Lu- 
siads"  so  different  from  all  other  epics.  The 
theme  is  not  presented  as  an  ideal  action  in 
remote  time  after  the  manner  of  other  poets, 
but  seems  a  real  event,  something  that  the 
poet  had  done  and  been.  It  is  as  if  Ulysses 
had  written  the  "  Odyssey."  Camoens  was 
himself,  like  Ulysses,  such  a  traveller,  a  ro- 
mantic wanderer,  a  hard-toiling  man,  in  the 
heroic  exile  of  enterprise  on  the  sea-edges 
of  a  larger  and  unknown  world.  It  is  this 
temperament  of  the  wanderer  that  so  endears 
him  to  all  nomad  souls.  It  is  this  which 
made  him  attractive  to  Captain  Burton,  for 
example,  who  made  the  labor  of  translating 
his  works  a  part  of  his  task  for  twenty  years ; 
and  though  it  is  marvellously  unreadable, 
it  is  from  this  translation  that  I  shall  quote; 
for  at  times,  and  not  seldom,  he  catches  the 
spirit  of  Camoens  as  the  sail  catches  the 
wind.  The  "Lusiads"  is  a  sea-poem.  No 
poem  approaches  it  in  maritime  quality  ex- 
cept the  "  Odyssey."  The  note  of  the  whole 
is  struck  in  Da  Gama's  account  of  the  set- 
ting sail  of  the  fleet  from  Lisbon :  — 


CAMOENS  73 

"We  from  the  well-known  port  went  sorrowing, 
After  the  manner  of  far-faring  men." 

The  fleet  made  out  to  sea,  and  this  is  the 
parting  view :  — 

"  Slow,  ever  slower,  banisht  from  our  eyne, 
Vanisht  our  native  hills,  astern  remaining ; 
Remained  dear  Tagus,  and  the  breezy  line 
Of  Cintran  peaks,  long,  long,  our  gaze  detaining ; 
Remained  eke  in  that  dear  country  mine 
Our  hearts,  with  pangs  of  memory  ever  paining ; 
Till,  when  all  veiled  sank  in  darkling  air, 
Naught  but  the  welkin  and  the  wave  was  there." 

The  sense  not  only  of  the  deep  sea,  as  in  this 
last  line,  but  of  the  undiscovered,  is  constantly 
present,  —  not  only  the  illimitable  waste  of 
waters,  but  the  peril  of  them.  It  is  a  growing 
peril,  vaguely  felt  at  first  beside  the  new  islands 
and  capes  lately  discovered,  in  the  strangeness 
of  the  coasts  by  which  the  ships  drop  south- 
ward, in  the  adventures  with  the  unfamiliar 
tribes  at  the  landfalls;  but  the  strangeness 
becomes  peril,  slowly  and  surely,  —  that 
panic  fear  which  is  not  for  a  moment  of  alarm 
but  for  days  and  nights  of  increasing  dread  — 
the  mood  which  all  great  explorers  have 
known,  from  Columbus  to  the  latest,  who 


74  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

have  had  to  master  their  men  with  the  desper- 
ate force  of  a  higher  courage  and  hold  them  to 
the  onward  course.  It  is  this  gigantic  fear, 
rising  from  the  endless  rolling  of  the  sea  and 
driving  of  the  cloudy  winds  in  the  pathless 
ways  of  the  lonely  sail,  —  it  is  this  fear  that 
Camoens  gives  body  and  a  name  in  the  most 
daring  and  perhaps  the  most  celebrated  of  the 
inventions  of  his  fancy, —  the  apparition  of  the 
giant  phantom,  Adamastor,  off  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope.  Adamastor  symbolizes  the  dan- 
gers of  the  ocean  enterprise  and  the  revenge  of 
the  elements  outraged  by  the  human  victory 
over  their  brute  power. 

What  Camoens  there  renders  by  imagina- 
tion and  allegory  he  draws  again  realisti- 
cally in  the  account  of  the  storm  in  the  Indian 
Ocean.  The  storm  in  Shakspere's ' '  Tempest ' ' 
is  the  only  sea-storm  that  compares  with  it 
for  majesty  and  violence,  and  at  the  same 
time  for  truth  to  sea-weather.  The  little 
picture  of  the  night-watch  on  deck  with 
which  the  scene  opens  gives  perhaps  in 
briefest  space  that  unaffected  naturalism 
which  distinguishes  Camoens'  descriptions  of 
actuality:  — 


CAMOENS  75 

"All  half-numbed  and  chill 
Shivered  with  many  a  yawn  the  huddling  crew 
Beneath  the  bulging  mainsail,  clothed  ill 
To  bear  the  nightly  breath  that  keenly  blew ; 
Their  eyes  kept  open  sore  against  their  will 
They  rubbed  and  stretched  their  torpid  limbs  anew,"  — 

and  to  keep  awake  they  begin  to  spin  yarns ;  in 
this  case  the  fine  chivalric  tale  of  the  Twelve  of 
England  —  in  the  course  of  which  the  storm 
breaks  on  them  with  tropic  suddenness. 

The  labor  of  the  life  is  thus  a  main  element 
in  the  poem,  which  is  solid  with  experience 
and  sombre  with  it,  also.  Camoens  de- 
lighted in  his  companions,  those  vassals  of  the 
king,  " peerless  in  their  worth,"  but  it  is  the 
darker  side  of  their  lives  that  holds  his  imagi- 
nation and  memory  alike :  — 

"  Look  how  they  gladly  wend  by  many  a  way :  — 
Self-doomed  to  sleepless  night  and  foodless  day, 
To  fire  and  steel,  shaft-shower,  and  bullet-flight ; 
To  torrid  Tropics,  Arctics  frore  and  gray, 
The  Pagan's  buffet  and  the  Moor's  despite ; 
To  risks  invisible,  threating  human  life, 
To  wreck,  sea-monsters  and  the  wave's  wild  strife." 

The  lonely  death  in  a  foreign  land,  always 
near  in  the  prospect,  imparts  a  deep  melan- 
choly to  the  verse,  that  true  epic  melancholy, 


76  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

which  Virgil  summed  in  that  one  of  his  most 
immortal  lines  where  the  dying  soldier  "  re- 
members sweet  Argos."  Camoens  was  a 
man  of  friendships,  of  that  comradeship  which 
flowers  only  in  such  hardy  soil,  and  many  of 
his  verses  lament  the  untimely  death  of  the 
brave  heart  in  its  youth.  One  sonnet  on  the 
death  of  a  comrade  in  Africa,  in  the  form  of  an 
epitaph  spoken  by  the  victim,  best  tells  the 
story :  — 

"  Few  years  and  evil  to  my  life  more  lent, 
All  with  hard  toil  and  misery  replete : 
Light  did  so  swiftly  from  my  eyes  retreat, 
That  ere  five  lustres  quite  were  gone,  I  went. 
Ocean  I  roamed  and  isle  and  continent, 
Seeking  some  remedy  for  life  unsweet ; 
But  he  whom  Fortune  will  not  frankly  meet, 
Vainly  by  venture  wooes  her  to  his  bent. 
First  saw  I  light  in  Lusitanian  land, 
Where  Alemquer  the  blooming  nurtured  me; 
But,  feeble  foul  contagion  to  withstand, 
I  feed  the  fish's  maw  where  thou,  rude  sea, 
Lashest  the  churlish  Abyssinian  strand, 
Far  from  my  Portugal's  felicity." 

The  same  mood,  in  the  "  Lusiads,"  fills  the 
stanza  which  he  dedicates  to  the  memory  of 
all  who  fell  by  the  wave  and  along  the  trail :  — 


CAMOENS  77 

"  At  last  in  tangled  brake  and  unknown  ground 
Our  true  companions  lost  for  aye  we  leave, 
Who  mid  such  weary  ways,  such  dreary  round, 
Such  dread  adventures,  aidance  ever  gave. 
How  easy  for  man's  bones  a  grave  is  found  ! 
Earth's  any  wrinkle,  ocean's  any  wave, 
Whereso  the  long  home  be,  abroad,  at  home, 
For  every  hero's  corse  may  lend  a  tomb." 

Camoens  is  always  directly  faithful  to  the 
daily  and  hourly  life,  to  the  physical  scene 
and  the  human  manners ;  but  his  truth  to  the 
heroic  spirit,  the  martial  breath  that  filled 
the  sails  of  the  great  enterprise,  and  also  his 
truth  to  the  sentiment  of  the  wanderer,  the 
power  whereby  he  renders  the  melancholy 
which  falls  from  the  dry  and  sterile  Ara- 
bian peaks  of  rose-red  rock,  diffusing  that 
nostalgia  of  the  brave  heart,  heightening 
all  that  bravery  so,  and  thereby  renews 
for  us,  and  illumines,  that  old  type  of  the 
" much-enduring"  man,  —  all  this  constitutes 
a  truth  for  which  reality  seems  but  a  faint  and 
shadowy  name.  It  is  the  truth  not  merely 
of  a  voyage,  but  of  man's  life  on  earth,  — 
such  as  it  is  when  poetry  presents  it  most 
nobly,  most  feelingly,  and  without  a  veil.  To 
Camoens  the  fortune  of  human  life  showed  no 


78  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

smiling  face;  it  was  not  in  fortune  but  in 
character  that  he  found  life's  value.  He  was 
a  lover  of  heroic  men,  those 

"  By  the  doughty  arm  and  sword  that  chase 
Honor  which  man  may  proudly  hail  his  own ; 
In  weary  vigil,  in  the  steely  case, 
'Mid  wrathsome  winds  and  bitter  billows  thrown, 
Suff 'ring  the  frigid  rigors  in  th'  embrace 
Of  South,  and  regions  lorn,  and  lere,  and  lone ; 
Swallowing  the  tainted  rations'  scanty  dole, 
Salted  with  toil  of  body,  moil  of  soul." 

The  character  of  Da  Gama  is  very  nobly 
drawn;  he  is  all  that  such  a  leader  should 
be;  a  figure  worthy  of  his  place  in  the  poem, 
and  of  the  fame  to  which  he  is  exalted,  akin  to 
iEneas  before  him  and  to  Tasso's  Godfrey 
who  was  born  after  him.  Camoens'  morality, 
his  conception  of  the  character  of  "a  good 
king,  a  great  captain,  a  wise  councillor,  a  just 
judge,  a  pure  priest,"  as  Burton  draws 
the  catalogue,  is  always  energetic  and  lofty. 
Of  all  his  personal  qualities  he  is  most  proud 
of  his  own  independence  in  judgment,  his 
honesty  of  speech,  his  perfect  and  entire 
fearlessness.  He  returns  repeatedly  to  this 
claim  of  truth-telling,  which  he  thought  was 


CAMOENS  79 

his  duty  as  a  part  of  his  fidelity  to  the  Muses; 
and  when  he  invokes  their  aid,  he  makes  this 
his  main  plea :  — 

"  Aid  me  you  only :  —  long  indeed  sware  I 
No  grace  to  grant  where  good  doth  not  prevail, 
And  none  to  flatter,  whatso  their  degrees 
On  pain  of  losing  all  my  power  to  please." 

In  telling  the  story  of  Portugal,  past  and 
present,  he  had  much  occasion  to  use  this 
high  ideal;  not  even  in  those  days  did  he 
hesitate  to  denounce  and  inveigh  within  the 
pale  of  the  Church  itself.  Morality,  in  the 
high  sense  of  character,  pervades  the  poem; 
virtue,  in  the  ancient  and  manly  meaning 
of  the  word,  —  the  old  epic  "arms  and  the 
man,"  —  is  its  substance,  and  charm  is  dif- 
fused over  it  as  in  the  "  iEneid."  This  charm 
partly  arises  from  that  oriental  coloring  — 
the  lux  ex  Oriente  —  natural  to  the  scene, 
in  the  detail  of  which,  Burton  says,  Cam- 
oens  rarely  trips,  being  more  accurate  than 
most  modern  authors,  and  that  experienced 
traveller  wonders  at  the  quality  of  the  brain 
that  amassed  so  much  information  from 
sources  so  few  and  so  imperfect.  The  charm, 
however,  lies  also  in  the  contrast  between  the 


80  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

realism  of  the  matter  and  the  fantastic  power 
of  Camoens'  imagination,  which  is  one  of  his 
most  powerful  and  fascinating  traits  and 
peculiarly  a  feature  of  his  originality.  The 
Adamastor  episode  serves  as  an  example; 
but  a  nobler  one  is  the  ideal  figuring  of  the 
rivers  Indus  and  Ganges,  who  appear  like 
Neptunian  forms  in  the  dream  of  the  old 
king  which  was  one  of  the  motives  of  the 
voyage.  The  variation  by  which  the  scenes 
of  pictured  history  —  a  tradition  of  the  epic 
and  seen  by  iEneas,  you  remember,  at  Car- 
thage— are  here  found  spread  on  the  banners 
of  the  festally  decorated  Portuguese  ships  is 
a  happy  play  of  the  poet's  fancy.  The  isle 
of  Venus,  that  receives  the  homeward-bound 
fleet,  is  perhaps  the  most  surprising,  as  it  is 
certainly  the  loveliest,  of  these  imaginative 
fantasies.  But  it  is  not  by  any  piecemeal 
criticism  and  naming  of  passages  that  the 
quality  of  this  epic  can  be  conveyed. 

Yet  one  must  add  still  another  of  its  larger 

elements,  namely,  its  spaciousness.    I  mean 

the  map  of  the  world,  like  that  map  I  read  from 

'  Tamburlaine,"  that  it  unfolds.     Camoens 

describes  the  European  quarter  early  in  the 


CAMOENS  81 

poem,  beginning  from  Russia  and  sweeping 
southward  and  west,  leaving  England  entirely 
out  as  if  it  were  Iceland  of  to-day,  and  finding, 
of  course,  in  the  little  state  of  Portugal  the 
climax  and  summit  of  the  world.  It  is  a 
perspective  to  which  our  thoughts  are  unused, 
but  in  its  day  was  not  an  untrue  one;  and  for 
us  to  have  it  in  mind  —  to  emigrate  into  it, 
as  it  were  —  is  a  prerequisite  to  the  apprecia- 
tion of  the  "Lusiads,"  for  such  was  Camoens' 
world.  He  also  describes  the  voyaging  of 
the  fleet  with  great  detail.  But  it  is  in  the 
last  book  of  the  poem  that  the  face  of  the 
new  earth  is  shown,  magically  in  the  mystic 
globe  of  the  planetary  sphere,  to  Da  Gama 
by  the  Siren:  that  new  earth,  fresh  as  it 
then  arose  from  the  uncovered  waters, —  the 
Asian  seas  and  continent  and  islands,  the 
African  coasts  and  uplands,  and  the  unknown 
west  far  as  through  Magellan's  Straits;  it 
is  a  wide  reach,  a  finer  vision  than  Milton  gave 
from  the  specular  mount,  and  with  it  as  in  its 
own  horizons  the  epic  ends. 

The  "Lusiads"  is  the  only  truly  modern 
epic,  but  one  seems  to  breathe  in  it  the  early 
air  of  the  "  Odyssey  "  and  " Iliad"  more  than 


82  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

in  any  intervening  poem ;  like  the  "  Iliad  "  and 
the  "Odyssey,"  it  has  no  love  element  in 
its  plot,  but  the  old  heroic  life  —  man's  life 
of  the  oar-blade  and  the  battle-field — rules  the 
scene.  The  sense  of  primitive  life,  however, 
is  still  deeper-seated,  in  its  neighborhood 
to  nature,  where  the  sky  is  the  tent  of  the 
bivouac  and  the  roof  of  the  deck-watch, 
and  man  is  a  solitary  figure  in  the  landscape, 
and  life  a  hand-to-hand  affair.  Into  that 
far  alien  field  of  earth  and  waters  the  pride 
of  Portugal  is  carried,  as  it  were,  on  the  ban- 
ners of  a  little  squadron  conquering  a  mighty 
world.  It  was  fitting  in  the  Peninsular 
war  that  the  regiments  of  Portugal  went  into 
battle  with  lines  of  Camoens  inscribed  upon 
their  flags.  Yet  it  is  a  narrow  view  that 
would  see  in  the  "Lusiads"  only  the  self- 
glorification  of  a  little  state.  It  has  a  larger 
significance.  The  blending  of  the  East  and 
West  at  a  great  dawn^of  history  is  here  ren- 
dered in  a  noble  form  of  human  greatness, 
cast  in  the  lives  of  a  few  brave  men  equal  to 
great  tasks. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  traits  of  this  epic. 
But  what  a  fiery  soul  must  that  have  been 


CAMOENS  83 

which  could  carry  such  a  passion  of  poetry 
through  the  years  of  exile  and  ever  cherish  it  as 
a  life  above  life  itself!  The  deep  melancholy 
of  Camoens,  as  it  gathered  in  later  years,  is 
plain;  his  failure  in  love  —  the  hunger  of  the 
heart  that  was  never  to  be  appeased  with 
any  earthly  touch  of  the  ideal  —  was  but  the 
sign  of  the  famine  that  fell  upon  him  in  all 
the  ways  of  success.  He  had  no  talent  for 
success.  He  was  filled  with  poet's  blood,  as 
the  pure  grape  with  wine.  He  was  wild  and 
free,  amorous,  framed  for  enjoyment,  South- 
ern-hearted, a  boon  comrade,  a  tender  friend; 
between  the  prison  and  the  camp  and  the 
ship's  deck  he  had  a  soldier's  gayety,  was 
fond  of  fine  apparel  and  of  golden  suppers,  — 
the  adventurer's  changeful  fortune;  but 
failure  was  all  he  found  in  the  East,  and  the 
profound  discouragement  of  his  lot  invaded 
his  heart  at  last.  He  reviewed  his  life  in  one 
of  his  last  sonnets. 

"  In  lowly  cell,  bereaved  of  liberty, 
Error's  meet  recompense,  long  time  I  spent ; 
Then  o'er  the  world  disconsolate  I  went, 
Bearing  the  broken  chain  that  left  me  free ; 
My  life  I  gave  unto  this  memory ; 
No  lesser  sacrifice  would  Love  content ; 


84  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

And  poverty  I  bore  and  banishment ; 
So  it  was  ordered,  so  it  had  to  be. 
Content  with  little,  though  I  knew  indeed 
Content  unworthy,  yet,  aloof  from  strife, 
I  loved  to  mark  Man's  various  employ. 
But  my  disastrous  star,  whom  now  I  read, 
Blindness  of  death,  and  doubtfulness  of  life, 
Have  made  me  tremble  when  I  see  a  joy." 

The  passing  of  hope  out  of  his  life  was  the 
history  of  his  soul.  He  came  home  only 
to  make  disaster  sure,  as  the  event  proved. 
Sick,  old  with  wounds,  the  almshouse  gave 
him  to  the  hospital,  and  the  hospital  to  the 
grave,  as  a  corpse  is  cast  from  wave  to  wave 
till  it  sinks  into  a  nameless  tomb.  It  seems 
—  it  is  —  pitiful. 

"  Woe  unto  all  that  hope !  to  all  that  trust ! "  — 

it  is  the  epitaph  of  most  of  the  poets.  Yet 
it  is  from  the  consuming  flame  of  such  a 
passion  and  power  of  life  as  burnt  in  this 
much-enduring  soul  that  poetic  genius  gives 
out  its  immortal  star. 


IV 

BYRON 

It  is  an  error  to  think  of  Byron  as  an 
English  poet;  he  was  expatriated  not  only 
in  his  person  but  in  his  genius;  and  this 
partly  accounts  for  the  fact  that  his  repu- 
tation so  soon  became,  and  still  remains, 
Continental.  He  was  not  a  poet  of  what 
was  always,  Jor  Him,  the  dismal  island  of  his 
birth.  He  was  rather  a  poet  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean world.  There  he  found  the  main 
material  of  his  "worTEsT^— T5Ee~moiE Ive7~ the 
stage,  the  incidents,  and~tKe  inspiration,  — 
the  picturesque  and  romantic  scene  of  his 
imagination,  ranging  from  the  Straits  of  Gi- 
braltar to  the  Golden  Horn.  He  stamped  his 
memory  there  —  still  felt  —  from  Calpe  to 
Stamboul.  Portugal  and  Spain,  Albania 
and  Greece  were  his  earliest  topics  in  verse 
after  his  boyish  preluding  was  done;    Italy 

85 


86  THE   INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

was  the  main  theme  of  his  most  majestic 
manhood  poetry;  and  by  a  nearer  and  in- 
ternal tie  the  Italian  literary  tradition  en- 
tered into  his  genius  and  characterized  his 
style.  England  need  not  have  troubled  to 
refuse  Him  so  oXten-and^salong  aluche  in  the 
Abbey;  for  wherever  his  bones  may  lie  or 
tablets  ^f^ratfifuLionor~be ..erected^  Greece 
isTFe.true^rine  of  his  memory,  and  will 
always  be  so.  In  all  things  that  pertain  to 
the  immortal  part  of  him,  he  thus  belongs 
to  the  Mediterranean;  and  it  is  only  in  the 
perspective  of  those  broken  coasts,  in  the 
purple  of  those  lonely  islands,  in  the  high 
atmosphere  of  those  snow-clad  and  throng- 
ing peaks  that  his  genius  is  seen  as  in  its 
home. 

He  was  but  a  youth  and  in  the  first  flush 
of  his  poetic  blood,  when  the  Mediterranean 
revelation  came  to  him,  on  his  first  voyage. 
He  entered  the  south  by  Lisbon.  The  mo- 
ment was  a  true  awakening;  and  so  natural 
that  he  was  not  aware  the  poet  was  born  in 
him;  and  later  he  was  still  clinging  to  his 
adolescent  and  apprentice  work  —  such  as 
the  " Hints  from  Horace"  —  for  the  hope  of 


BYRON  87 

reputation,  when  by  the  publication  of  these 
first  Mediterranean  moods,  he  "awoke  and 
found  himself  famous."  But  his  fame  was 
not  more  sudden  than  the  awakening  had 
been.  He  responded  at  once  to  that  dis- 
closure of  the  Mediterranean  beauty,  which 
is  a  romantic  marvel  to  all  Northern  eyes; 

"Ah  me,  —  what  hand  can  pencil  guide  or  pen 
To  follow  half  on  which  the  eye  dilates  ?  " 

and  one  feels  his  new  throb  of  life  in  the 
mere  amplitude  of  description  that  over- 
flows  even   from   the   earliest   stanzas :  — 

"  The  horrid  crags  by  toppling  convent  crowned ; 
The  cork-trees  hoar  that  clothe  the  shaggy  steep ; 
The  mountain-moss  by  scorching  skies  embrowned ; 
The  sunken  glen  whose  sunless  shrubs  must  weep ; 
The  tender  azure  of  the  unruffled  deep, 
The  orange  fruits  that  gild  the  greenest  bough, 
The  torrents  that  from  cliff  to  valley  leap, 
The  vine  on  high,  the  willow  branch  below, 
Mixt  in  one  mighty  scene." 

Byron  had  the  poet's  temperament,  full 
and  strong,  —  the  peril  in  his  blood,  the 
wildness  of  impulse,  the  lawless  will,  the 
passion  of  life.  He  was  fresh  from  his  first 
angers  with  life,   and  had  gone  out  from 


88  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

England  seeking  an  escape,  —  some  air  of 
freer  breath,  some  horizon  to  wander  in. 
It  was  now  that  the  love  of  the  ocean  was 
confirmed  in  him;  for  in  his  experience  it 
was  a  love  of  Mediterranean  waves.  It  was 
from  them,  as  he  sailed  onward,  that  the 
Corsair's  song  was  caught :  — 

"  O'er  the  glad  waters  of  the  dark  blue  sea, 
Our  thoughts  as  boundless,  and  our  souls  as  free, 
Far  as  the  breeze  can  bear,  the  billows  foam, 
Survey  our  empire,  and  behold  our  home !  " 

It  was  a  great  adventure  for  this  youth  of 
twenty  years  —  such  a  voyage  into  the 
Levant.  It  was  a  free  life,  —  such  freedom 
as  he  had  never  known,  —  and  it  was  ro- 
mantic in  its  scene  and  human  incident,  its 
mingling  with  more  primitive  men  of  strange 
aspect  and  rough  hardihood,  its  combined 
naturalness  and  foreignness.  He  never  for- 
got its  pictures;  and  he  drew  one  for  all  in 
that  passage  of  "The  Dream"  which  de- 
scribes in  brief  these  wanderings :  — 

"  In  the  wilds 
Of  fiery  climes  he  made  himself  a  home, 
And  his  soul  drank  their  sunbeams ;  he  was  girt 
With  strange  and  dusky  aspects ;  he  was  not 


BYRON  89 

Himself  like  what  he  had  been ;  on  the  sea 
And  on  the  shore  he  was  a  wanderer ; 
There  was  a  mass  of  many  images 
Crowded  like  waves  upon  me,  but  he  was 
A  part  of  all ;  and  in  the  last  he  lay 
Reposing  from  the  noontide  sultriness, 
Couched  among  fallen  columns,  in  the  shade 
Of  ruined  walls  that  had  survived  the  names 
Of  those  who  reared  them ;  by  his  sleeping  side 
Stood  camels  grazing,  and  some  goodly  steeds 
Were  fastened  near  a  fountain ;  and  a  man 
Clad  in  a  flowing  garb  did  watch  the  while 
While  many  of  his  tribe  slumbered  around ; 
And  they  were  canopied  by  the  blue  sky, 
So  cloudless,  clear,  and  purely  beautiful, 
That  God  alone  was  to  be  seen  in  heaven." 

This  admirably  composed  oriental  scene 
may  stand  for  the  circumstance  and  atmos- 
phere of  this  voyage  as  Byron  himself  re- 
membered it,  but  it  needs  to  be  supplemented 
by  the  more  stirring  scenes,  such  as  his  re- 
ception by  the  Suliotes  when  the  weather 
forced  him  and  his  crew  to  land  on  that 
doubtful  coast :  — 

"Vain fear !    The  Suliotes  stretched  the  welcome  hand, 
Led  them  o'er  rocks,  and  past  the  dangerous  swamp, 
And  piled  the  hearth,  and  wrung  their  garments  damp, 
And  filled  the  bowl,  and  trimmed  the  cheerful  lamp, 
And  spread  their  fare  —  though  homely,  all  they  had." 


90  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

Through  such  contact  with  nature,  with 
the  picturesque  and  primitive,  with  wild  and 
savage  or  broad  and  solitary  scenes,  Byron's 
imagination  first  took  on  its  romantic  color; 
and  the  free  life  he  led  in  the  open,  on  the  sea 
and  in  camp,  loosed  in  him  that  spirit  of 
adventure  which  in  his  verse  took  the  cast 
of  desperate  love  and  pirate  warfare,  — 
the  passion  and  brigandage  of  the  Levantine 
East.  They  were  almost  natural  elements 
in  that  environment;  and  in  idealizing  them 
the  ardors  of  his  own  young  temperament 
found  an  imaginative  form.  /Byron  never 
again  lived  so  fully  and  keenly,  either  im- 
aginatively or  in  the  merely  physical  sense, 
as  in  this  early  year  of  his  Mediterranean 
roving.  He  was  not  a  natural  wanderer,  a 
born  traveller,  like  Camoens.  He  never 
heard  the  call  of  the  wilderness  nor  obeyed 
the  Wander-lust  This  voyage  was  only 
such  a  one  as  any  young  Englishmen  might 
take  for  pleasure,  for  sport.  Nevertheless, 
to  him,  being  a  poet,  it  constituted  his 
awakening,  and  stirred  and  freed  him,  and 
gave  his  genius  wing.  It  remained  his  deepest 
poetic  experience  and  the  happiest  memory 


BYRON  91 

of  his  dying  past,  with  its  "rosy  floods  of 
twilight's  sky";  its  latest  recollections,  after 
many  years,  gave,  in  "Don  Juan,"  the  love- 
liest scenes  of  all  his  verse;  and  he  was  con- 
scious of  the  debt :  — 

"  Ave  Maria !  blessed  be  the  hour ! 
The  time,  the  clime,  the  spot,  where  I  so  oft 
Have  felt  that  moment  in  its  fullest  power 
Sink  o'er  the  earth,  so  beautiful  and  soft, 
While  swung  the  deep  bell  in  the  distant  tower, 
Or  the  faint,  dying  day-hymn  stole  aloft, 
And  not  a  breath  crept  through  the  rosy  air, 
And  yet  the  forest  leaves  seemed  stirred  with  prayer." 

Byron  in  later  years  himself  once  wrote  to 
Moore  in  a  moment  of  discouragement  that 
his  poetical  feelings  began  and  ended  with 
Eastern  countries,  and  that  having  exhausted 
the  subject,  he  could  make  nothing  of  any 
other.  Certain  it  is  that  this  year  of  adven- 
turous travel  unlocked  the  sources  of  his 
poetic  power  J 

The  sudden  burst  of  his  genius  under 
these  favoring  circumstances  is,  as  you  know, 
one  of  the  wonders  of  literary  fame.  He  had 
made  three  very  simple  prime  discoveries. 
The  first  was  of  the  romance  of  the  Orient ; 


92  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

and  his  rendering  of  it  in  his  tales  is  still 
its  chief  example  in  our  literature.  Moore, 
who  cultivated  the  same  field,  was  in  this  as  in 
other  things  only  Byron's  satellite;  and  both 
he  and  Southey  and  the  others  who  added 
the  Arabian  or  Persian  glamour  to  their  works 
were  mainly  indebted  to  dictionaries,  com- 
mentators, and  travellers,  whereas  Byron 
took  it  from  its  native  soil.  However  melo- 
drama may  enter  into  his  tales,  it  would  be 
an  error  not  to  recognize  their  realism,  not 
only  in  their  magnificent  nature-coloring, 
but  also  in  their  manners,  the  accoutrement 
of  their  scenes,  the  play  of  their  passions,  — 
and  especially  in  their  truth  to  the  sentiment 
of  the  land,  — 

"  The  land  where  the  cypress  and  myrtle 
Are  emblems  of  deeds  that  are  done  in  their  clime." 

Byron's  genius,  in  a  certain  sense,  was  low- 
flying;  he  never  liked  to  be  far  from 
matter  of  fact;  and  in  that  " bodiless  crea- 
tion "  that  the  more  ethereal,  spiritualizing 
poets  delight  in,  he  was  without  faculty. 
He  was  little  gifted  with  the  power  of  in- 
vention, and  beneath  his  verse  is  often  found 
the  substratum  of  the  prose  of  others.     Even 


BYRON  93 

in  these  tales  there  is  paraphrasing  of  Mrs. 
RadclinVs  novel,  "The  Bravo,"  for  example; 
just  as  in  his  drama  "Werner"  there  is 
another  English  novel,  and  in  "The  Island" 
and  in  the  shipwreck  of  "Don  Juan"  there 
are  versions  of  old  voyages.  Byron  required 
that  the  scene  should  be  given  to  him,  a 
basis  of  matter  of  fact,  —  realism.  It  was  his 
good  fortune  that,  in  assimilating  the  Orient, 
realism  was  given  to  him  in  a  romantic  form 
and  on  that  superb  landscape  background, 
of  which  the  description  of  the  sunset  over 
the  Morea,  seen  from  Acrocorinth,  is  per- 
haps the  most  familiar  example.  This  color- 
ing belongs  to  the  characters  as  well,  who 
are  charged  with  passion  and  bravery;  and 
the  whole  is  in  keeping  with  that  tradition  of 
violent  adventure  and  sudden  turns  of  for- 
tune, which  is  the  historic  legend  of  the 
Mediterranean  in  the  Moslem  centuries. 
The  tales,  in  fact,  are  nearer  to  the  temper 
of  Southern  literature,  long  familiar  with  the 
Saracen  and  the  Turk,  than  to  our  own. 
Their  realism  cannot  but  seem  exotic  in 
English,  but  to  the  traveller  they  recall  the 
country  of  their  origin  with  the  vividness  of 


94  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

memory.  For  Byron's  fame  this  discovery 
of  the  Levant  was  not  unlike  what  the  dis- 
covery of  the  Highlands  had  been  for  Scott, 
—  a  new  world  where  fact  itself  was  romance. 
The  second  discovery  of  Byron  was  the 
sentiment  of  history  in  the  landscape.  It 
began  in  his  classical  devotion.  He  had 
been  bred  in  school  and  college  on  Greek, 
and  had  that  enthusiasm  for  the  ancient  past 
that  was  one  of  the  great  and  fruitful  traits 
of  the  old  education.  He  had  translated 
from  many  a  Greek  poet  with  schoolboy 
fervor.  This  voyage  vivified  his  boyhood 
studies.  Nothing  is  more  genuine  in  his  life 
than  the  emotion  with  which  the  actual 
presence  of  the  sacred  places  of  the  old  Greek 
land  filled  him. 

"Oh,  thou  Parnassus!  whom  I  now  survey, 
Not  in  the  frenzy  of  a  dreamer's  eye, 
Not  in  the  faded  landscape  of  a  lay, 
But  soaring  snow-clad  through  thy  native  sky, 
In  the  wild  pomp  of  mountain  majesty  !  .  .  . 

Oft  have  I  dreamed  of  Thee !  whose  glorious  name 
Who  knows  not,  knows  not  man's  divinest  lore : 
And  now  I  view  thee,  'tis,  alas,  with  shame 
That  I  in  feeblest  accents  must  adore. 


BYRON  95 

When  I  recount  thy  worshippers  of  yore 
I  tremble,  and  can  only  bend  the  knee ; 
Nor  raise  my  voice,  nor  vainly  dare  to  soar, 
But  gaze  beneath  thy  cloudy  canopy 
In  silent  joy  to  think  at  last  I  look  on  Thee ! " 

It  was  on  the  next  day  after  composing  these 
stanzas  that  he  saw  on  Parnassus  the  flight 
of  twelve  eagles  that  he  took  as  a  happy 
omen  of  his  poetic  fame.  The  mood  of  these 
lines,  the  mere  fact  of  this  incident,  testify 
to  the  sincerity  of  his  feeling.  It  warmed 
his  description  of  Greece,  and  gave  that  heroic 
blast  to  the  lines  with  which  again  and  again 
he  strives  to  rouse  the  sleeping  land.  It 
was  a  feeling,  moreover,  destined  to  a  rich 
development,  and  at  last  made  him  the 
characteristic  type  of  the  brooder  over  the 
buried  past,  —  the  poet  of  the  desolation  of 
human  greatness.  Here,  again,  the  solid 
base  of  history,  the  natural  cling  of  his  mind 
to  realism,  to  matter  of  fact,  is  noticeable. 
Under  this  mood  of  history  poetry  becomes 
meditative,  in  a  deep  sense,  and  broods  upon 
human  fate  in  its  final  issues;  there  grows 
up  that  feeling  which  Tennyson  called  "  the 
passion  of  the  past,"  and  it  interprets  itself 


96  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

and  finds  expression  as  an  elegy  of  the  nations. 
Byron  became  the  great  poet  of  this  mood; 
it  was  born  of  his  contact  with  the  Mediter- 
ranean shores,  and  it  took  its  touch  of  nobility 
especially  from  the  classic  stir  of  his  emo- 
tions in  Greece. 

The  third  discovery  in  this  year  of  travel 
was  his  practical  enthusiasm  for  political 
liberty;  or,  if  it  be  hardly  just  to  ascribe  to 
one  group  of  circumstances  the  revolutionary 
force  that  played  so  great  a  part  in  his  fame 
and  was  so  deeply  rooted  in  his  nature,  yet 
it  was  the  actual  sight  of  the  servitude  of 
Greece  that  precipitated  and  condensed  and 
gave  practical  direction  to  his  ardor.  Every 
line  of  his  enthusiasm  for  the  Greece  of  old 
days  goes  coupled  with  a  rousing  cry  to 
free  the  land;  and  great  lines  they  are  in 
which  he  strikes  this  tocsin  of  liberty,  none 
now  more  famous :  — ■ 

"  Hereditary  bondsmen,  know  ye  not 
Who  would  be  free  themselves  must  strike  the  blow ! " 

Indignation  with  the  present  sloth  and  ig- 
nominy is  in  constant  struggle  with  his  mem- 
ory of  the  past  and  his  feeling  of  virtue  in  the 
soil  and  of  the  beauty  of  the  scene:  — 


BYRON  97 

"  Yet  are  thy  skies  as  blue,  thy  crags  as  wild ; 
Sweet  are  thy  groves,  and  verdant  are  thy  fields, 
Thine  olive  ripe  as  when  Minerva  smiled, 
And  still  his  honeyed  wealth  Hymettus  yields ; 
There  the  blithe  bee  his  fragrant  fortress  builds, 
The  free-born  wanderer  of  thy  mountain-air ; 
Apollo  still  thy  long,  long  summer  gilds, 
Still  in  his  beam  Men  deli's  marbles  glare ; 

And  Glory,  Freedom  fail,  but  Nature  still  is  fair. 

"  Where  e'er  we  tread  'tis  haunted,  holy  ground ; 
No  earth  of  thine  is  lost  in  vulgar  mould, 
But  one  vast  realm  of  wonder  spreads  around, 
And  all  the  Muse's  tales  seem  truly  told, 
Till  the  sense  aches  with  gazing  to  behold 
The  scenes  our  earliest  dreams  have  dwelt  upon ; 
Each  hill  and  dale,  each  deepening  glen  and  wold 
Defies  the  power  which  crushed  thy  temples  gone : 

Age  shakes  Athena's  tower,  but  spares  gray  Marathon." 

The  very  name  of  the  old  battle-field  is  a 
reproach.  It  is  in  these  stanzas,  and  others 
like  them,  that  there  is  the  prophecy  of 
Missilonghi. 

These  three  elements  of  the  verse,  the 
romance  of  the  Orient,  the  sentiment  of  the 
past  in  the  places  of  its  decay,  the  call  to 
arms  against  the  Turk,  are  Mediterranean 
moods.  Every  traveller  still  recognizes  them 
as  dominant  in  his  own  experience,  —  the 


98  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

picturesqueness,  the  desolation  of  old  time, 
the  hope.  The  sense  of  desolation  is  the 
most  universal  and  profound,  and  in  five 
lines  Byron  gave  it  expression  that  is  true 
not  of  one  place  but  on  all  the  thousands  of 
miles  of  those  lonely  and  half-savage  coasts: 

"  Approach  you  here ! 
Look  on  this  spot  —  a  nation's  sepulchre ! 
Abode  of  gods  whose  shrines  no  longer  burn. 
Even  gods  must  yield  —  religions  take  their  turn ; 
'Twas  Jove's ;    'tis  Mahomet's ;  and  other  creeds 
Will  rise  with  other  years,  till  man  shall  learn 
Vainly  his  incense  soars,  his  victim  bleeds." 

Every  traveller  knows  the  mood,  and  there  at 
least  is  apt  to  find  it  just.  Outside  of  the 
circle  of  these  three  earlier  motives,  romance, 
meditation  on  the  past,  enfranchisement, 
the  nobler  genius  of  Byron,  even  in  after 
years,  hardly  moved;  nor  did  it  rise  to 
its  height  in  other  than  Mediterranean  air, 
except  on  the  field  of  Waterloo  and  in  the 
mountains  of  Switzerland. 

In  his  later  works  he  gave  the  first  motive, 
romance,  its  most  memorable  expression  in 
the  loves  of  Juan  and  Haidee  in  scenes  of 
unrivalled   beauty,  —  the  highest   reach   of 


BYRON  99 

the  romance  of  passion  in  English  verse; 
the  second  motive,  meditation,  he  developed 
most  impressively  and  eloquently  in  the  last 
book  of  "Childe  Harold,"  making  Italy  his 
theme,  in  an  elegy  of  genius  and  empire  that 
is  nowhere  equalled;  the  third,  freedom, 
found  its  climax  not  in  poetry  but  in  his 
death  for  Greece. 

There  is  yet  another  element  that  sprang 
and  strengthened  in  this  year  of  travel,  and  is 
inextricably  blended  with  the  other  three,  — 
his  initiation  into  the  love  of  nature.  Byron 
was  not,  as  I  have  already  said,  a  true  rover; 
he  was  not  only  not  a  Camoens, — he  was  not 
even  a  Burton  or  a  Borrow.  He  never  again 
repeated  this  excursion,  but  was  content  to 
live  within  the  pale  of  civilization.  He  was 
aristocratically  bred,  and  necessarily  a  social 
person;  in  the  fine  stanzas  on  solitude, 
you  remember,  he  found  true  solitude,  not 
in  nature  but  in  crowds,  that  is,  in  the 
sense  of  isolation,  and  this  marks  him  as 
essentially  a  social  person;  but  once  in  his 
life  he  had  approached  the  mood  of  the 
rover,  and  he  describes  the  precise  moment 
when  he  — 


100  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

"  felt  himself  at  length  alone, 
And  bade  to  Christian  tongues  a  long  adieu ; 
Now  he  adventured  on  a  shore  unknown, 
Which  all  admire,  but  many  dread  to  view ; 
His  breast  was  armed  'gainst  fate,  his  wants  were  few ; 
Peril  he  sought  not,  but  ne'er  shrank  to  meet ; 
The  scene  was  savage,  but  the  scene  was  new ; 
This  made  the  ceaseless  toil  of  travel  sweet, 
Beat  back  keen  winter's  blast  and  welcomed  summer's 
heat." 

It  is  the  picture  of  a  young  man  with  a  horse, 
the  mood  of  Kinglake,  for  example,  in 
"Eothen."  But  in  this  adventure  he  first 
touched  hands  with  nature,  and  found  by 
experience  the  bracing  and  reposing  power 
that  nature  exercises  on  the  social  and  aris- 
tocratic man  bred  in  cities,  —  he  found  the 
relief  which  nature  affords  as  a  foil  to  life. 
He  escaped  from  the  conventional  and  en- 
tangling sphere  of  society,  and  reached  un- 
bounded freedom  in  the  open.  The  scene 
appealed  to  him  also  as  a  poet;  the  extraor- 
dinary beauty  of  it,  the  majestic  moun- 
tain ranges  round  the  long  purple  gulfs,  the 
mere  clarity  of  the  heavens  were  a  revelation 
to  his  senses,  and  educated  them,  and  through 
them    entered    into    his   spirit.     There  was 


BYRON  101 

also  an  idiosyncrasy  in  his  temperament, 
something  grandiose  in  the  man's  soul  which 
the  greater  scenes  of  nature  developed  and 
defined  more  consciously  and  gave  a  run  of 
feeling;  such  scenes  roused  the  physical 
electricity  of  his  body,  and  made  him  sym- 
pathetic with  the  Alpine  storm,  the  glacier 
peak,  and  the  ocean  gale.  This  deep  power 
of  nature  so  to  stir  him,  and  to  exhaust 
itself  in  mere  feeling,  first  fell  on  him  with 
full  seizure  in  the  solitudes  of  the  Greek 
coasts.  It  grew  with  his  growth,  but  it  was 
then  dissociated  from  this  early  adventure 
and  experience  of  the  wild  and  the  foreign.  It 
became  a  power  of  pure  sentiment.  "To  me," 
he  says,  "high  mountains  are  a  feeling."  It 
was  a  more  physical  feeling  than  is  found  in  his 
contemporaries ;  he  did  not  idealize  and  trans- 
form and  mythologize  nature,  like  Shelley,  or 
become  pantheistic  or  religious  in  his  thought 
of  it  or  awe  of  it,  like  Wordsworth ;  among 
nature-poets  —  and  he  is  one  of  the  greatest 
of  nature-poets  —  he  remains  in  the  dimly 
conscious  and  uninterpreted  mood  of  men  who 
in  the  presence  of  nature  only  see  and  feel.  It 
was  true  of  him  in  this  early  time,  — 


102  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

"  Where  rose  the  mountains,  there  to  him  were  friends ; 
Where  rolled  the  ocean,  thereon  was  his  home ; 
Where  a  blue  sky,  and  glowing  clime  extends, 
He  had  the  passion  and  the  power  to  roam ; 
The  desert,  forest,  cavern,  breaker's  foam, 
Were  unto  him  companionship ;  they  spake 
A  mutual  language." 

But  after  this  first  youthful  year  "  the  pas- 
sion and  the  power  to  roam  "  was  a  figment 
of  his  ideal  self,  though  he  retained  the  secret 
of  that  "  mutual  language,"  and  wherever 
he  found  himself  in  his  later  little  journeys 
from  Geneva  to  Venice,  from  Ravenna  to 
Pisa,  he  used  this  key. 

It  is  apparent  from  what  has  been  already 
brought  forward  that  Byron  unfolded  his 
genius  characteristically  through  phases  of 
sentiment,  romantically  colored,  of  which 
the  various  elements  show  themselves  clearly 
in  the  first-fruits  of  his  Mediterranean  ex- 
perience, —  the  fourfold  sentiment  for  the 
Levant,  for  the  elegy  of  history,  for  the  hopes 
of  the  Greeks,  for  the  more  majestic  phe- 
nomena and  the  elemental  force  of  nature. 
As  he  matured,  he  developed  another  senti- 
ment, which  was  destined  to  swallow  up  all 
these,    and,    as    it    were,    to    fatten    upon 


BYRON  103 

them,  and  to  become  the  memory  of  him 
that  most  deeply  stamps  his  personality  in 
the  minds  of  men.  I  can  only  call  it  the 
sentiment  of  self.  He  was  an  egotist,  as 
most  of  the  poets  have  been;  egotism  is 
the  secret  of  their  strength  as  it  is  of  the 
strength  of  all  masters  of  the  world,  except, 
indeed,  the  few  spiritually  minded  who  dare 
to  throw  their  lives  away.  He  built  up,  as 
years  went  on,  an  ideal  self;  the  analysis  of 
its  formation  would  be  an  interesting  psy- 
chological study,  for  it  was  framed  from 
many  sources.  It  is  but  slightly  to  be  dis- 
cerned in  the  early  cantos  of  "  Childe  Har- 
old." It  hardly  became  fixed  in  his  own 
mind  until  after  the  troubles  which  led  to 
his  second  and  final  flight  from  England 
into  that  self-exile  which  lasted  till  his  death. 
He  was  one  of  those  men  who  have  some- 
thing theatrical  in  their  nature;  he  loved 
the  centre  of  the  stage;  he  liked  effect.  The 
circumstances  of  his  life  made  it  easy  for  him 
to  hold  attention;  and  also  to  adopt  into 
his  character  an  element  of  mystery,  of 
which  he  knew  the  stage  value;  and  he 
favored  by  his  air  and  conduct  the  public 


104  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

disposition  to  create  in  the  background  of  his 
career  something  melodramatic;  he  let  it 
be  believed  that  in  his  own  Mediterranean 
experience  there  had  been  the  color  of  "The 
Corsair  "  and  of  "  Lara,"  and  that  in  the  type 
of  his  heroes  there  was  something  of  himself 
in  masquerade.  It  is  in  the  third  canto  of 
"  Childe  Harold  "  that  he  unmasked  frankly 
to  the  public  the  ideal  self  as  it  had  come  to 
be  at  the  moment  of  his  departure  from 
England,  —  the  ideal  of  the  blighted  life:  — 

"The  very  knowledge  that  he  lived  in  vain, 
That  all  was  over  on  this  side  the  tomb." 

This  is  the  well-known  refrain  that  through 
a  hundred  variations  makes  "Childe  Har- 
old" not  only  an  elegy  of  nations  but  a  per- 
sonal lament  of  the  individual  life.  It  does 
not  appear  to  me  that  the  burden  of  "  Childe 
Harold"  is  disillusion;  it  is,  on  the  contrary, 
disappointment ; 

"We  wither  from  our  youth,  we  gasp  away : 
Sick  —  sick  —  unfound  the  boon,  unslaked  the 
thirst,  —  " 

in  lines  like  these  the  mood  is  of  the  futility 
of  life,  which  is  as  strongly  felt  in  a  thwarted 


BYRON  105 

ambition  as  in  a  vanished  ideal.  Byron's 
melancholy  is  not  that  of  the  betrayed  ideal- 
ist, it  seems  to  me,  but  rather  of  the  thwarted 
realist;  life  had  denied  to  him  his  will. 

Power  has  always  been  the  quality  most 
immediately  recognized  in  Byron  —  "the 
greatest  force  that  has  appeared  in  our  litera- 
ture," says  Arnold,  you  remember,  "  since 
Shakspere";  and  every  reader  feels  "the 
fiery  fount"  in  him,  that  Dionysiac  daemonic 
force,  which  is  the  core  of  poetic  energy. 
He  had  the  unquenchable  thirst  for  life 
that  belongs  to  the  poets;  desires  and  ambi- 
tions filled  him;  but  in  the  first  maturity 
of  manhood,  just  before  he  was  thirty,  there 
fell  on  him  the  certainty  that  he  was  balked, 
that  his  passion  and  power  of  life  was  an 
irony  of  fate,  and  for  him  only  the  curse  of 
being.  It  is  not  necessary  to  inquire  into  the 
causes  of  this;  the  fact  was  so;  and  against 
this  fact  he  revolted  with  a  reaction  of  tre- 
mendous energy.  It  so  happened  that  the 
country  of  his  birth,  England,  served  her  poet 
mainly  as  a  foil  that  brought  out  the  most 
violent  aspects  of  this  revolt.  England,  in 
his  mind,  was  the  incarnation  of  that  which 


lOe  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

had  defrauded  him.  In  turn  he  struck  back. 
In  his  religious  dramas  he  attacked  orthodoxy, 
and  in  "Don  Juan"  he  attacked  morality, 
as  the  English  understood  those  terms; 
he  shocked  England,  and  still  shocks  her,  by 
the  blasphemy  and  licentiousness,  as  it  is 
there  described,  of  his  verse.  It  was  his  liter- 
ary revenge  on  his  country. 

He  still  strove  for  the  poetic  laurel;  he 
had  literary  ambition  to  a  strong  degree, 
and  his  historical  dramas  are  rooted  in  this 
ambition,  the  fruits  of  it,  and  are  little  suc- 
cessful, for  the  soil  of  mere  ambition  is  not 
deep  enough  for  poetry.  His  productiveness 
was  great  and  rapid;  he  showed  his  energy 
in  this  trait,  and  created,  as  it  were,  by  main 
force  a  drama  in  a  month,  a  poem  in  a  day. 
In  nearly  all  the  same  strain  is  constant, 
and  the  despair  or  contempt  of  life  is  the 
motive  that  yields  alike  the  most  sincere  and 
the  most  cynical  verse,  and  makes  the  ground 
tone  of  the  whole.  It  is,  however,  impossible 
not  to  feel  that  Byron's  suffering  was  real, 
that  in  him  something  noble  was  frustrated, 
and  that  the  ideal  self,  on  which  he  con- 
centrated all  his  power  of  sentiment  with  an 


BYRON  107 

extraordinary  faculty  of  self-pity  and  of  self- 
exaltation,  had  genuine  elements.  In  the 
last  canto  of  "Childe  Harold"  he  blends  his 
own  melancholy  —  that  of  the  individual 
life  —  with  the  melancholy  of  the  fate  of 
human  grandeur  in  a  flow  of  noble  eloquence 
and  personal  passion,  gathering  breadth  and 
majesty  under  the  shadow  of  Rome,  until 
he  pours  it  like  a  mighty  river  into  the  sea  in 
that  last  magnificent  apostrophe  on  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  "Childe  Har- 
old," which  gave  forth  the  first  fountains 
of  his  genius,  taken  in  its  whole  course,  is  its 
life-stream;  it  is  his  most  noble  work,  and 
contains  all  his  personal  ascendency  in  the 
figure  of  Harold,  and  the  most  powerful 
elements  of  his  genius  in  its  brooding  over  the 
life  of  man  and  of  mankind,  —  the  fate  of 
passion  in  life  and  of  glory  in  time.  Its  only 
rival  in  his  fame  is  "  Manfred,"  where  he 
gave  dramatic  form  to  this  same  ideal  self, 
and  condensed  its  story  in  a  brief  and  tragic 
play.  This  form  is  more  sombre  and  com- 
posed, and  seems  more  personal,  more  actual 
in  its  ideal  self -portraiture ;  but  this  is  due  to 
its  simpler  definition  and  intense  concentra- 


108  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

tion.  What  "  Childe  Harold  "  is  diffusely  and 
elegiacally,  "Manfred"  is  intensely  and  dra- 
matically, —  the  ideal  summary  of  Byron. 

It  was  this  ideal  summary  that  in  the  next 
age  became  Byronism,  and  filled  the  European 
youth  with  its  moods;  nor  should  there  be 
anything  strange  in  this;  for  Byronism, 
despite  all  seeming,  is  the  mood  of  strength. 
It  contains  the  two  halves  of  youthful  life 
at  the  full,  —  its  intense  ardors  and  its  pro- 
found discouragements.  The  melancholy  of 
Byron  is  the  shadow  cast  by  his  power;  he 
lamented  life  because  he  loved  it  so  much. 
It  is  true  that  for  men  of  English  blood,  what 
seems  melodramatic  and  sentimental  and 
the  weakness  of  personal  complaint  interferes 
with  the^appreciation  of  his  verse;  but,  as  I 
said  at  the  beginning,  Byron  is  not  character- 
istically an  English  poet,  but  a  poet  of  the 
Southern  lands,  of  the  Mediterranean,  where 
he  found  his  inspiration  and  his  themes,  and 
in  whose  neighborhood  he  passed  his  life 
during  the  composition  of  his  works;  and  to 
men  of  Romance  blood,  and  also  to  the  German 
and  the  Slav,  melodrama  and  sentiment  and 
the  psychology  of  passion  are  quite  a  different 


BYRON  109 

thing  from  what  they  are  in  the  British 
climate  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  temperament. 
The  surprise  and  novelty  of  these  things  to 
Englishmen  was  indeed  one  of  the  causes  of 
their  immediate  success  in  London  when 
they  were  still  fresh.  Byron's  rendering  of  the 
history  and  the  scenes  of  passion  is  the  sign 
royal  of  his  poetic  genius.  He  was,  in  this  as 
in  all  other  ways,  a  realist,  and  he  presented 
the  theme  with  a  vividness  of  emotion,  a  rush 
of  eloquence,  and  a  dramatic  sense  of  incident 
and  of  catastrophe,  that  make  them  still 
the  best  tales  in  poetry  in  our  literature,  as 
they  originally  drove  Scott,  his  only  rival  in 
the  game,  out  of  the  field.  It  was  natural 
that  with  the  maturing  of  years,  and  amid 
his  own  private  unhappiness,  he  should 
show  the  darker  side  of  the  history  of  passion  ; 
and  no  poet  has  so  painted  its  pains  and  its 
despairs,  as  in  the  Rousseau  stanzas  and  many 
others;  it  is  natural,  too,  that  such  an  ex- 
pression, so  violent,  so  warm,  so  personal,  so 
self -revealing,  should  be  more  sympathetically 
received  by  the  nations  of  Southern  tempera- 
ment, who  are  to  the  manner  born,  and  in 
whose  lives  passion  plays  like  blood,  and  to 


110  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

whose  own  experience  these  lines  give  form 
and  meaning.  Passion,  the  poet's  gift,  was 
Byron's  endowment  and  experience  both,  and 
in  his  latest  work  he  still  drew  its  scenes 
with  truth  and  charm  beyond  all  others, 
with  delight  in  them,  even  when  the  sequel  was 
cynicism.  It  is  by  the  variety  and  the  fire 
of  his  renderings  of  real  scenes  of  passion, 
and  by  the  psychological  analysis  of  it  as  an 
element  in  the  wretchedness  and  futility  of 
life,  that  he  entered  most  intimately  into 
the  hearts  of  all  those  youths  whom  he  so 
stirred  upon  the  Continent.  It  was  to  them 
a  part  of  his  strength.  It  was  as  a  type  of 
strength  and  not  of  weakness  that  they  saw 
him.  He  was  to  them  a  Promethean  figure, 
Titanic  in  energy,  suffering  the  woes  of  life, 
and  warring  on  the  gods  of  the  old  regime, 
the  incarnation  of  splendid  and  passionate 
revolt  against  life  itself.  His  poetry  had 
with  them  the  double  fortune  that  it  had  in 
himself;  it  blended  with  their  private  lives  on 
the  pathetic  side  and  with  their  public  hopes 
in  their  revolutionary  energy.  For,  if  he  was 
the  victim  of  passion,  he  was  also  the  apostle 
of  liberty;  no  voice  rang  like  his  through 


BYRON  111 

Europe  in  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  in  his 
death  he  was  its  martyr. 

If  there  is  one  thing  that  is  borne  in  on  the 
sympathetic  reader  of  his  life,  it  is  that  the 
man  lacked  a  career,  —  some  channel  for 
the  passion  and  power  of  life  in  him  to  pour 
through,  some  cause  to  serve,  some  deed  to  do. 
In  personality  he  reminds  one  of  that  Renais- 
sance type,  masterful,  not  subject  to  any 
law,  reckless;  and,  in  his  later  years,  he  seems 
near  to  the  decadence,  like  an  Italian  noble- 
man of  the  degeneracy,  disoccupied  with  life 
and  more  selfishly  cynical  with  each  revolving 
year.  It  was  from  this  state  that  he  roused 
himself  to  make  that  last  effort  in  the  cause 
of  Greece  which  restored  to  him  the  robe  of 
honor  that  was  slipping  from  his  shoulders. 
It  was  from  one  point  of  view  a  kind  of 
suicide  of  genius,  —  the  act  of  a  man  who 
finds  nothing  left  but  to  die  with  honor.  In 
seeking  it,  nevertheless,  he  recalls  to  us  the 
generous  qualities  that  were  in  his  youth, 
of  which  the  type  is  the  Boy  in  the  antique 
oratory.  There  was  a  spirit  of  nobility  in 
the  man's  soul  in  early  years,  as  his  school 
friendships  show;    and  though  dimmed,  it 


112  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

was  never  lost.  He  was  good  metal.  He 
had  power;  he  had  passion;  and  the  charter 
of  greatness  was  his.  He  had  come  to  wreck, 
in  his  own  eyes;  and  to  ours  he  seems  like 
a  noble  vessel  chafing  to  pieces  on  the  sluggish 
reef  of  time.  He  would  end  it.  He  remem- 
bered his  youth, — when  he  had  sat  on  Suni- 
um's  marble  steep  and  dreamed  that  Greece 
might  yet  be  free.  He  went  back  to  those 
Adriatic  shores,  to  the  Leucadian  seas,  where 
he  had  coasted  in  the  dawn  of  his  fame, 
to  the  height  of  snowy  Parnassus  over  the 
long  purple  gulf  that  had  so  stirred  him, 
and  there  in  its  shadow,  in  his  last  stanza, 
he  said  adieu  to  life:  — 

"Seek  out  —  less  often  sought  than  found  — 
A  soldier's  grave,  for  thee  the  best ; 
Then  look  around,  and  choose  thy  ground, 
And  take  thy  rest." 


GRAY 

I  have  thought  it  appropriate  to  select  one 
example  of  the  poetic  temperament,  not  from 
the  "  bards  sublime,"  but  from  those  more 
quiet  sons  of  the  Muse  whom  we  call  minor 
poets;  for,  though  their  works  be  in  low 
relief,  yet,  if  the  theory  is  sound,  they  should 
show  in  their  degree  the  traits  of  the  grand 
style,  as  we  find  the  same  supreme  Greek 
art  even  on  broken  vases  and  utensils  of 
daily  life.  Certainly  no  one  would  dream 
of  describing  Gray  as  "mad";  the  word 
"passion"  is  grotesquely  inapplicable  to  him; 
and  even  such  a  phrase  as  "the  power  of  life " 
seems  dubiously  to  be  used  of  his  lethargic 
nature.  He  was  a  mild  and  gentle  scholar, 
who  lived  in  the  lazy  air  of  a  university, 
slow  in  all  his  physique,  intellectually  self- 
indulgent,  procrastinating,  an  invalid  with 

i  113 


114  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

invalid  habits  of  conduct,  a  dilettante,  a 
letter- writer.  His  entire  routine  of  life  afflicts 
us  with  a  sense  of  dulness  and  heaviness,  an 
English  atmosphere  of  dampness  and  ennui, 
which  inclines  us  at  once  to  commiseration. 
He  wrote  very  little,  —  so  marvellously  little 
that  he  is,  in  literary  history,  the  typical 
instance  of  unproductiveness,  of  sterility. 
The  Dionysiac  fire  was  very  somnolent,  to 
say  the  least,  in  his  case.  Vesuvius,  how- 
ever, is  not  always  in  violent  eruption,  and 
those  who  look  on  it  for  the  most  part  see  the 
mighty  mountain  with  only  a  thin  wisp  of 
smoke  lazily  drifting  upon  the  pale,  high  air ; 
sometimes  there  is  not  even  that. 

In  comparison  with  such  poets  as  we  have 
considered,  Gray's  verse  is  such  a  wisp  of 
smoke.  Yet  it  is  fair  to  remember  —  what  is 
oftenest  forgotten  —  that  great  literature  is 
not  a  constant  product  of  this  planet,  that 
many  nations  have  none  of  it  to  speak 
of,  and  that  in  favored  nations  it  is  the 
rarest  of  all  their  products.  On  the  whole, 
poetic  energy,  if  it  has  the  violence  and  splen- 
dor of  volcanic  fire,  has  also  its  general  repose- 
fulness.      In   the  intervals  of  activity  men 


GRAY  115 

are  content  with  the  minor  phenomena  which 
show  the  continued,  though  torpid,  existence 
of  the  great  life-principle;  and  the  wisp  of 
smoke  is,  after  all,  curling  placidly  up  from 
the  old  forges  within.  It  behooves  us,  espe- 
cially, to  be  modest,  for  our  magnificent 
America  has  never  yet  produced  a  poet  even 
of  the  rank  of  Gray.  Moreover,  there  is  a 
singular  circumstance  in  Gray's  case:  slight 
as  his  product  was,  it  has  had  an  immense 
fame  and  vogue  among  men.  His  work 
resembles  one  of  those  single  anonymous 
poems  of  the  world  which  have  achieved  fame 
all  by  themselves,  unaided  and  alone.  Little 
poetry  has  been  so  widely  read,  so  familiarized 
in  households,  as  the  "  Elegy."  It  has  also 
been  highly  appreciated.  No  poem  has  had 
a  finer  compliment  paid  it  than  was  con- 
tained in  the  old  story  of  Wolfe's  reciting 
it  to  his  officers  in  the  darkness  of  the  river 
as  he  drifted  down  to  his  heroic  death,  and 
declaring  that  to  write  it  was  more  glorious 
than  a  victory.  The  "Elegy,"  it  is  true,  is 
somewhat  exceptional ;  but  the  best  of  Gray's 
work  has  had  equal  immortality,  and  still 
goes  wherever  the  English  language  makes  its 


116  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

way.  No  one  reads  Marlowe  now  except 
students  in  libraries  and  poets  by  profession; 
and  the  voice  of  Byron  grows  rare  and  dis- 
tant,—  his  vogue  evaporates;  but  Gray's 
verse  still  has  the  shining  of  the  adamant  of 
time  upon  its  lines,  and  seems  as  untouched 
with ;? two  centuries  as  Mimnermus  and 
Theognis  with  twenty.  Gray  is  among  the 
poets  who  die  only  with  the  language  that 
they  breathed. 

Gray  did  not  greatly  strive  for  fame. 
Perhaps  there  was  some  obstruction  in  his 
nature  or  his  circumstances;  perhaps  he  did 
not  greatly  care.  There  was,  at  least,  no 
struggle  in  him,  no  restless  necessity  for  ex- 
pression, no  stress  of  thought  or  of  feeling. 
He  was,  as  a  mortal,  very  ordinary;  and  as  a 
man  of  culture,  very  humane.  He  led  the 
stillest  of  bachelor  lives  in  college  chambers. 
If  he  had  deliberately  excluded  emotion  from 
his  life,  he  could  hardly  have  better  succeeded. 
Of  course  he  was  often  bored,  and  often  lazy, 
—  that  is,  not  unemployed,  but  with  a  schol- 
ar's laziness.  He  took  but  little  interest 
in  contemporary  politics  or  war,  and  found 
rather  amusement  than  any  cause  for  excite- 


GRAY  117 

ment  in  the  spectacle  of  what  men  do.  The 
passage  in  which  he  describes  Pitt's  speech, 
on  proposing  a  monument  for  Wolfe,  is  typical 
and  a  melancholy  comment  on  the  admira- 
tion of  Wolfe  for  the  writer.  "  Pitt's  second 
speech,"  he  says,  "was  a  studied  and  puerile 
declamation  on  funeral  honors.  In  the 
course  of  it  he  wiped  his  eyes  with  one  hand- 
kerchief, and  Beckford,  who  seconded  him, 
cried,  too,  and  wiped  with  two  handkerchiefs 
at  once,  which  was  very  moving."  That 
is  typical  of  the  way  in  which  he  looked  on 
human  affairs.  They  were  no  great  matter, 
—  Gray  was  a  gentleman.  He  moved  freely 
in  the  world  of  high  life,  and  liked  to  talk 
of  men  of  rank  over  the  sweet  wine  he  drank 
after  his  mutton.  The  passions  of  nations, 
the  swing  of  ideas,  the  fortunes  of  battle,  were 
no  more  to  him  than  club  topics  would  be 
to-day,  news  and  conversation,  but  not  excit- 
ing. He  read  Rousseau,  he  says,  but  "heav- 
ily, heavily";  that  is,  he  was  bored.  He 
had  his  well-bred  circle  of  friends,  very 
polite,  and  his  well-bred  private  tastes,  very 
cultivated;  but  he  was  unmoved,  habitually 
otiose,  lethargic,  oppressed  with  the  dulness 


118  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

of  things  very  often,  yet  not,  I  think,  un- 
happy; indeed,  a  certain  intellectual  gayety, 
even  in  describing  his  own  dulness,  is  a  part 
of  the  charm  of  his  private  correspondence. 
There  was  much  nonchalant  good  breeding  in 
him,  especially  as  he  grew  up  and  came  into 
the  routine  of  manhood;  he  was  a  man  of  the 
world,  not  in  the  sense  of  being  merely  a  man 
of  society,  but  in  the  sense  of  being  disengaged, 
disinterested,  the  impartial  spectator  with  a 
light  touch,  a  just  judgment,  and  a  tone  of 
elegance. 

In  his  youth  he  appears  more  amiably, 
though  there  was  in  him  then  all  the  promise 
of  the  type  he  became.  He  made,  you 
remember,  with  three  other  friends  at  college 
a  league  of  friendship  known  as  the  quadruple 
alliance.  Walpole  was  one  member  of  the  set ; 
and  his  friendship  with  Walpole  character- 
izes the  eighteenth-century  tone  of  the  social 
half  of  his  nature.  A  second  member  was 
West,  who  died  young  and  with  griefs  of  the 
mind  as  well  as  with  ills  of  the  body,  and  who 
left  a  charming  memory  of  himself,  both  in 
his  verses  and  in  his  affection  for  Gray,  with 
whom  he  is  associated  as  the  true  youthful 


GRAY  119 

comrade;  and  this  friendship  with  West, 
in  which  there  is  an  unusual  high-bred 
demeanor  considering  the  youth  of  the  two, 
characterizes  the  other  half  of  Gray's  na- 
ture, the  more  kindly  and  natural  half, 
not  more  intimate,  but  intimate  with  more 
equality;  with  Walpole  one  thinks  of  Gray's 
social  history,  with  West  one  thinks  of  his 
personal  charm. 

This  private  side  of  his  character  he  exhib- 
ited, it  would  seem,  in  his  college  residence 
during  his  mature  life  to  younger  men  who 
were  students  there.  The  tribute  that  one 
of  these  young  men  paid  to  him,  shortly  after 
his  death,  breathes  the  pure  spirit  of  such  a 
happy  relation.  The  passage  is  familiar, 
but  can  hardly  be  spared.  The  young  man 
is  writing  to  his  mother. 

"You  know  that  I  considered  Mr.  Gray 
as  a  second  parent,  that  I  thought  only 
of  him,  built  all  my  happiness  on  him, 
talked  of  him  forever,  wished  him  with  me 
whenever  I  partook  of  any  pleasure,  and 
flew  to  him  for  refuge  whenever  I  felt  any 
uneasiness.     To  whom  now  shall  I  talk  of 


120  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

all  I  have  seen  here?  Who  will  teach  me  to 
read,  to  think,  to  feel?  I  protest  to  you  that 
whatever  I  did  or  thought  had  a  reference 
to  him.  If  I  met  with  any  chagrins,  I  com- 
forted myself  that  I  had  a  treasure  at  home; 
if  all  the  world  had  despised  and  hated  me, 
I  should  have  thought  myself  perfectly 
recompensed  in  his  friendship.  There  re- 
mains only  one  loss  more;  if  I  lose  you,  I 
am  left  alone  in  the  world.  At  present  I  feel 
that  I  have  lost  half  myself." 

Another  instance  of  the  cordiality  with 
which  he  welcomed  youth,  at  least  when  it 
appealed  to  him  at  all,  is  his  remark  on  the 
Swiss  Bonstettin,  who  so  uselessly  tried  to 
make  Gray  talk  of  his  own  poetry  and 
personal  affairs.  "I  never  saw  such  a  boy," 
says  Gray;  "our  breed  is  not  made  on  this 
model." 

A  life,  so  untouched  with  worldly  unrest, 
so  withdrawn  in  happy  privacies  of  compan- 
ionship and  of  gentle  tastes,  so  breathing  the 
air  of  delightful  studies,  lying  wrapt  and 
sombre  in  our  minds  between  the  church- 
yard repose  and  the  collegiate  hush,  is  almost 


GRAY  121 

monastic  in  its  effect.  .Yet  the  impression 
needs  to  be  relieved  by  other  traits.  Gray, 
for  example,  was  a  traveller,  and  at  times 
he  escaped  from  this  seclusion  of  himself,  for 
if  the  mind  does  not  change  with  travel,  it 
at  least  moves  under  different  lights.  He 
made  the  journey  through  France,  when  he 
was  young,  with  Walpole,  and  went  into 
Italy  as  far  as  Naples.  Whether  he  derived 
it  from  this  excursion  or  not,  he  had  a  liking 
for  travel,  —  I  dare  not  call  it  a  passion, — 
but  it  was  perhaps  such  an  enthusiasm  as  his 
veins  were  capable  of.  It  is  said  that  he  had 
mapped  out  every  picturesque  journey  in 
England,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  picturesque  journeys  in  England  for 
an  elegant  gentleman  like  Mr.  Gray  were 
really  proofs  of  enterprise.  He  was  early 
hardened  to  tiavel  on  the  road  and  had 
knowledge  of  inns,  and  in  these  journeys  was 
his  slight  taste  of  adventure,  —  all  he  had. 
Just  before  he  died  he  seemed  to  feel  that  his 
only  hope  lay  in  travel.  The  fact  of  his  say- 
ing so  shows  how  much  travel  had  meant 
to  him  in  his  life.  The  notes  he  made  of  his 
Italian  travel,  for  example,  exhibit  the  quality 


122  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

of  his  mind  with  great  clearness.  He  was 
mentally  vastly  curious;  his  intellectual  curi- 
osity was  unbounded,  and  shows  primarily 
in  him  the  mind  of  the  scholar;  not  the  mind 
of  the  thinker  at  all,  —  for  he  seldom  gener- 
alizes,— but  that  of  the  scholar,  the  collector 
of  knowledge ;  for  knowledge  may  be  collected 
like  snuff-boxes  or  fossils,  and  the  scholar's 
learning  is  not  infrequently  a  sort  of  museum. 
Such  a  museum  was  Gray's  mind.  On  his 
Italian  journey  one  sees  him  in  the  act  of 
collecting  it  with  youthful  enthusiasm.  He 
catalogues  the  pictures  and  marbles,  and 
describes  and  comments  briefly  upon  them; 
he  maps  the  cities,  the  squares  and  buildings, 
the  river  and  the  road,  and  the  ruins  beside 
the  way.  In  Naples,  especially,  one  is  struck 
by  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  explored 
the  ancient  district  to  the  west  of  the  city, 
the  diversity  of  interests  he  found  there,  the 
fulness,  minuteness,  and  variety  of  his  ac- 
count, compressed  though  it  is,  and  above  all 
by  the  interest  he  took  in  it.  His  open  and 
cordial  spirit  toward  foreign  things  —  not  a 
frequent  trait  in  first  travels  —  is  extraor- 
dinary.    He  was  plainly  a  careful  traveller, 


GRAY  123 

laborious  and  fruitful  in  observation,  storing 
up  multitudes  of  facts.  This,  which  is  so 
plainly  seen  in  the  Italian  notes,  is  character- 
istic of  his  mind  in  all  its  accumulations. 

He  was  a  connoisseur  of  the  fine  arts,  not 
merely  in  the  major  arts,  painting,  sculpture, 
and  architecture,  but  in  prints,  antiquities, 
gardening.  He  applied  himself  to  natural 
sciences  in  several  fields,  like  Goethe,  and 
made  the  best  account  of  English  insects 
up  to  that  time.  He  was  profound,  for  his 
age,  in  history,  and  commanded  foreign  his- 
tory in  its  own  languages.  He  was  as  fond 
of  reading  travels  as  of  travelling,  and  inter- 
ested himself  in  geography;  he  investigated 
heraldry.  He  was  expert  in  the  literature 
of  the  art  of  cooking.  He  understood  music. 
He  was  an  excellent  scholar  in  Greek,  then  a 
rare  accomplishment,  and  very  thorough  in 
his  pursuit  of  it,  where  he  had  some  of  the 
qualities  of  a  pioneer.  Clearly,  he  had  a 
wonderfully  acquisitive  mind  for  facts,  and 
also  a  singular  capacity  for  the  development 
of  aesthetic  tastes  of  diverse  kinds.  He  was 
a  man  of  comprehensive  faculty  and  conse- 
quently of  erudition. 


124  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

His  information,  however,  retained  the 
general  character  of  the  note-book  and  the 
handbook;  it  was  miscellaneous,  but  exact 
and  detailed.  For  such  collections  as  have 
been  described  a  great  deal  of  industry  was 
required,  though  it  was  an  industry  that 
might  seem  to  Gray  often  a  waste  of  time 
and  a  kind  of  laziness;  in  details  one  often 
seems  bewilderingly  idle,  at  the  best,  and 
Gray's  mind  worked  by  details.  In  the  midst 
of  such  occupations  which  are  in  themselves 
the  leisure  of  a  college  life,  he  sometimes 
found  time  to  write,  or  to  cancel,  a  line  of  his 
poetry,  to  file  a  phrase  or  meditate  an  epithet, 
and  from  one  nine  years  to  another  to  publish 
a  poem.  There  was  no  hurry,  no  need; 
he  never  wrote  for  the  public,  nor  for  money; 
he  made  verses  as  a  man  of  taste,  just  as  he 
collected  butterflies  or  prints,  for  his  own 
pleasure. 

There  is  no  psychological  problem,  no 
temperamental  puzzle  in  Gray.  The  inquiry 
why  he  wrote  so  little,  which  seems  to  be  the 
main  concern  of  his  critics,  is  futile.  Ill 
health,  low  spirits,  dissipation  of  mind  on  a 
multitude  of  pursuits  and  interests  are  alleged 


GRAY  125 

as  one  reason;  but  great  poets  have  been 
so  afflicted  without  losing  their  voice.  That 
he  fell  on  an  age  of  prose  is  also  brought 
forward  to  account  for  the  fact;  but  his 
own  mind  was  not  at  all  prosaic;  even  the 
pursuit  of  science  could  not  make  it  so. 
He  did  not  choose,  did  not  care  to  write  very 
much.  What  he  did  write  he  wished  to  be  per- 
fect, —  just  as  every  letter  of  his  manuscript 
is  carefully  made,  even  in  his  loosest  notes. 
He  had  no  great  range  in  the  world  of  poetry. 
He  was  interested  in  neither  strong  emotions 
nor  great  ideas.  In  religion  being,  as  he 
said,  no  great  wit,  he  believed  in  a  God ;  and 
he  left  the  matter  there.  He  was  never 
emotionally  stirred  by  any  great  experience 
beyond  that  bereavement  which  is  the  com- 
mon human  heritage.  All  his  life  was  at  a 
low  temperature,  and  the  reasons  of  his 
infertility  seem  less  circumstantial  than  con- 
stitutional. 

The  classicism,  in  which  he  was  intellectu- 
ally bred,  suggested  and  gave  body  and  form 
to  his  development.  He  was  chiefly  a  moral- 
ist; in  substance  of  the  Latin  tradition,  using 
the  Roman  mode  of  abstract  imagination  and 


126  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

bringing  forward  those  contemporary  eigh- 
teenth-century figures  of  Fear,  or  Madness, 
or  Adversity,  which  together  make  a  kind 
of  philosophical  and  bodiless  mythology  in 
which  man's  psychical  fortunes  are  external- 
ized like  phantoms,  —  bloodless  and  weak 
creatures  that  are  to  true  mythology  what 
the  shade  of  Achilles  in  Hades  was  to  the 
glorious  earthly  manhood  of  the  hero.  The 
treatment,  however,  was  far  better  than  the 
substance,  for  he  employed  for  this  the  origi- 
nal Greek  method  of  idyllic  art.  He  was 
characterized,  as  I  have  said,  by  interest  in 
detail.  In  his  art  it  is  the  same.  He  was  a 
connoisseur  in  words,  and  thought  that  poetry 
has  a  diction  of  its  own,  more  select  than  the 
language  of  common  life,  and  he  was  careful 
to  employ  this  colored  and  somewhat  exqui- 
site language,  word  by  word.  He  built  the 
line  out  of  the  words,  and  the  line  rather  than 
the  phrase  is  his  unit  of  style.  He  filed  each 
line,  and  composed  the  stanza,  and  of  the 
stanzas  the  completed  poem.  At  each  step 
he  took  a  short  view;  to  have  the  fit  word, 
the  well-moulded  line,  the  stanza,  the  poem. 
In  all  this  process  he  worked  by  the  method 


GRAY  127 

of  detail ;  it  is  what  we  sometimes  call  in  verse 
jeweller's  work,  or  miniature  work.  The 
latter  phrase  is  the  most  suggestive,  for  it 
indicates  that  the  poem  is  made  up  of  suc- 
cessive pictures,  linked  together  in  a  larger 
composition,  or  else  simply  left  to  succeed 
each  other  in  a  pleasing  order.  This  is  the 
classical  idyllic  method  of  verse,  which  he 
learned  at  first  hand  from  the  Greek,  but  in  the 
English  use  of  which  he  was  instructed  by 
Milton  in  such  a  poem  as  "  L' Allegro  "  and  its 
companion  piece.  The  method  is  most 
familiar  to  us  in  Tennyson's  "Palace  of 
Art"  or  " Lady  of  Shalott." 

Gray  was  not  so  finished  an  artist  as  Milton 
or  Tennyson,  and  one  reason  of  this  is,  I 
think,  because  he  was  more  directly  and 
exclusively  dependent  on  his  taste  in  the  fine 
arts.  It  is  true  that  he  had  natural  taste,  and 
knew  that  poetry  is  good  only  when  born  in 
the  open,  or  must  be  written,  in  Arnold's 
phrase,  with  the  eye  on  the  object.  It  is  not 
a  very  adequate  phrase,  for  it  suggests  're- 
alistic rather  than  imaginative  treatment. 
Gray's  eye  was  certainly  not  on  any  object 
when  he  wrote :  — 


128  THE  INSPIRATION  OP  POETRY 

"Now  the  golden  Morn  aloft 
Waves  her  dew-bespangled  wing, 
With  vermeil  cheek  and  whisper  soft 
She  wooes  the  tardy  Spring ;" 

but  one  feels  in  these  lines  the  reminiscence 
of  painting,  —  the  "vermeil  cheek"  is  the 
glowing  of  the  color  softened  as  he  had  seen 
it  on  canvass  and  not  on  any  ruddy  English 
maiden.  The  whole  passage  is  fresco  paint- 
ing ;  and  so,  it  seems  to  me,  as  I  read  on,  I  see 
a  painted  landscape :  — 

"Yesterday  the  sullen  year 
Saw  the  snowy  whirlwind  fly  ; 
Mute  was  the  music  of  the  air, 
The  herd  stood  drooping  by." 

This  is  a  natural  scene,  but  it  is  carefully 
composed,  the  atmosphere  of  the  snow-squall 
first,  and  the  herd  in  the  foreground.  Farther 
on,  the  poem  becomes  frankly  pictorial,  using 
the  painter's  art  as  a  metaphor  and  not  to 
form  a  picture :  — 

"The  hues  of  bliss  more  brightly  glow, 
Chastised  by  sabler  tints  of  woe, 
And  blended,  form  with  artful  strife, 
The  strength  and  harmony  of  life." 


GRAY  129 

The  method  of  this  poem  is  obviously  that 
of  painting  in  these  passages. 

It  appears  to  me  also  that  he  uses  compo- 
sition —  I  mean  the  grouping  of  figures  — 
very  often  to  give  such  life  as  is  possible  to 
those  dreary  figures  of  the  family  of  sorrow, 
and  make  them  pleasing;  unless  he  does  so, 
he  leaves  the  present  generation  at  least 
with  a  very  dissatisfied  sense  of  beholding 
merely  allegoric  images  little  alluring  in 
themselves.  I  mean  such  composition  as 
this :  — 

"Amazement  in  his  van,  with  flight  combined, 
And  sorrow's  faded  form,  and  solitude  behind." 

So,  too,  the  same  holds  of  the  numerous 
dances,  rings,  and  bevies  to  be  found  in  his 
verse,  all  of  which  seem  to  me  like  reminis- 
cences of  wall-painting.  His  imagination 
was  internally  controlled  by  the  art  of  paint- 
ing, even  when  most  natural;  it  is  not  merely 
in  the  occasional  coloring  and  composition, 
such  as  I  have  instanced,  but  especially 
in  his  habitual  careful  use  of  perspective. 
In  nearly  every  poem  examples  may  be 
found  of  "this  peculiar  sensitiveness  to  dis- 


130  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

tance,  and  he  seldom  fails  to  give  either  hori- 
zon or  centring  to  the  view.  The  first 
stanza  of  the  Eton  Ode  gives  an  easy  ex- 
ample of  such  a  prospect,  complete  in  back- 
ground, in  foreground:  — 

"  Ye  distant  spires,  ye  antique  towers, 
That  crown  the  watery  glade, 
Where  grateful  Science  still  adores 
Her  Henry's  holy  shade ; 
And  ye  that  from  the  stately  brow 
Of  Windsor's  heights  the  expanse  below 
Of  grove,  of  lawn,  of  mead  survey, 
Whose  turf,  whose  shade,  whose  flowers  among 
Wanders  the  hoary  Thames  along 
His  silver-winding  way." 

Generally,  however,  it  is  by  a  brief  stroke 
that  the  effect,  the  idyllic  picture,  is  given. 
He  was  especially  fond  of  the  sight  of  a  dis- 
tant march  on  the  mountain-side.  Here  are 
some  instances  which  need  only  to  be 
read  —  this  of  the  sunrise:  — 

"  Night  and  all  her  sickly  dews, 
Her  spectres  wan,  and  birds  of  boding  cry, 
He  gives  to  range  the  dreary  sky, 
Till  down  the  eastern  cliffs  afar 
Hyperion's  march  they   spy,  and  glittering   shafts 
of  war." 


GRAY  131 

Or  this :  — 

"  Such  were  the  sounds  that  o'er  the  crested  pride 
Of  the  first  Edward  scattered  wild  dismay, 
As  down  the  steep  of  Snowdon's  shaggy  side 
He  wound  with  toilsome  march  his  long  array." 

Or  this  very  simple  but  perfect  scene :  — 

"  Far,  far  aloof  the  affrighted  ravens  sail ; 
The  famished  eagle  screams  and  passes  by." 

And  that  other  eagle  — 

"  Nor  the  pride,  nor  ample  pinion 
That  the  Theban  eagle  bear, 
Sailing  with  supreme  dominion 
Through  the  azure  deep  of  air." 

Or  for  a  near  scene,  and   one  illustrating 
Gray's  love  of  wild  majesty  in  nature:  — 

"Hark  how  each  giant  oak  and  desert  cave 
Sighs  to  the  torrent's  awful  voice  beneath." 

Or,  again,  the  well-known  image  of  the  prog- 
ress of  poetry :  — 

"Now  the  rich  stream  of  music  winds  along, 
Deep,  majestic,  smooth  and  strong, 
Through  verdant  vales  and  Ceres'  golden  reign; 
Now  rolling  down  the  steep  amain, 
Headlong,  impetuous,  see  it  pour ; 
The  rocks  and  nodding  groves  rebellow  to  the  roar." 


132  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

The  same  poem  yields  another  of  those  large- 
motioned  scenes  on  the  wide  prospect :  — 

"Behold  where  Dryden's  less  presumptuous  car 
Wide  o'er  the  fields  of  glory  bear 
Two  courses  of  ethereal  race, 

With  necks  in  thunder  clothed  and  long-resounding 
pace." 

Examination  will  show,  I  think,  the  pre- 
dominance in  Gray's  imagination  of  scenes 
thus  guided  by  his  eye  for  coloring,  composi- 
tion, and  perspective  in  the  painter's  rather 
than  the  poet's  way.  He  uses  perspective 
metaphorically  where,  for  example,  in  the 
laughter  of  the  morning  on  the  sea  the 
whirlwind  "  expects  his  evening  prey,"  and 
again,  just  below,  where 

"  Long  years  of  Havoc  urge  their  destined  course ; " 

and  we  find  it,  curiously  enough,  transformed 
both  to  the  sense  of  hearing  and  to  the  realm 
of  metaphor:  — 

"And  distant  warblings  lessen  on  my  ear, 
And  lost  in  long  futurity  expire." 

Observe,  too,  how  in  the  opening  of  the 
"  Elegy  "  the  landscape  is  thus  built  up,  with 


GRAY  133 

the  horizon,  the  half-distance,  and  the  fore- 
ground :  — 

"The  curfew  tolls  the  knell  of  parting  day; 
The  lowing  herd  wind  slowly  o'er  the  lea ; 
The  ploughman  homeward  plods  his  weary  way, 
And  leaves  the  world  to  darkness  and  to  me. 

"  Now  fades  the  glimmering  landscape  on  the  sight ; 
And  all  the  air  a  solemn  stillness  holds ; 
Save  where  the  beetle  wheels  his  droning  flight, 
And  drowsy  tinklings  lull  the  distant  folds. 

"  Save  that  from  yonder  ivy-mantled  tower 
The  moping  owl  does  to  the  moon  complain 
Of  such  as,  wandering  near  her  secret  bower, 
Molest  her  ancient  solitary  reign ; " 

and  the  eye  is  brought  to  rest  thus  on  the 
dark  churchyard,  with  its  shadowy  trees 
and  obscure  hillocks  and  hollows  of  the  turf. 
Gray,  then,  was  a  poet,  in  the  main  a 
moralist,  using  an  imaginative  method  to 
inlay  the  moral  sentiment  of  the  verse  with 
miniatures,  in  the  Greek  idyllic  mode,  but 
miniatures  which  have  in  them  the  scope 
of  fresco  and  canvass  by  virtue  of  his  use 
of  color,  composition,  and  perspective,  for 
which  he  was  indebted  to  the  fine  art  of 


134  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

painting,  by  whose  means  he  interpreted 
nature  and  also  realized  allegory.  The  scope 
of  his  interest  as  a  moralist  was  narrow  and 
commonplace,  and  hardly  exceeded  the  ordi- 
nary English  view  of  life  as  a  scene  of  misery 
of  which  the  last  act  is  the  burial  service. 
He  relieves  on  his  vision  of  spring,  you  remem- 
ber, the  figure  of  the  convalescent  invalid 
as  the  climax  of  happiness  in  that  season; 
he  sees  the  Eton  schoolboys  on  a  background 
of  the  actualities  of  life  suggesting  rather 
the  hospital  and  the  jail  than  a  battle- 
ground; he  leads  all  seasons  and  fortunes  up 
to  the  inevitable  hour  and  converges  the 
paths  of  glory  to  the  grave.  It  is  a  familiar 
English  view,  and  was  familiar  to  our  fathers 
at  least.  He  is  not  lacking  in  other  powers, 
in  satirical  and  light,  almost  gay,  verse,  as  in 
the  story  of  the  cat  and  the  goldfish,  where  he 
paints  the  fate  of  lovely  woman.  It  is  not  a 
cheerful  fate,  though  cheerfully  described. 
Nor  is  there  anything  cheerful  in  Gray, 
except  the  alleviations  of  our  misery  by  the 
rosy  hours  of  morning,  the  fragrance  breath- 
ing from  the  ground,  and  the  bliss  of  igno- 
rance   in    school   days.     The  characteristic 


GRAY  135 

of  Gray  is  a  sombre  view,  in  which  brilliant 
artistic  colors  are  inlaid  by  an  imaginative 
rendering  of  history  and  nature.  His  artis- 
tic faculty  distinguishes  him  in  his  common- 
place morality;  but  as  a  leader  in  a  new 
world,  with  the  passion  and  power  to  bring 
it  into  being,  he  seems  to  have  no  place, 
nor  was  there  in  his  life  the  fermentation  of 
any  profound  experience. 

He  does  present,  nevertheless,  certain  faint 
signs  of  the  characteristics  of  poetic  genius. 
For  one  thing,  his  verse  was  an  innovation. 
Excepting  the  " Elegy,"  which,  as  he  truly 
said,  succeeded  by  its  subject  and  would  have 
succeeded  had  it  been  prose,  his  verse  was  a 
puzzle  to  his  contemporaries  and  its  accept- 
ance was  slow ;  it  was  long  before  men  selected 
him  as  without  question  the  chief  poet  of  his 
generation,  and  longer  before  they  knew  that 
his  works  were  a  classic  of  his  language.  Yet 
he  originated  nothing;  his  originality  lay 
only  in  the  fact  that,  being  sincere  and  having 
a  sound  critical  faculty  of  high  order,  he  was 
true  to  the  great  tradition  of  poetry  which 
had  been  lost  in  England,  and  by  his  re- 
spect for  Shakspere  and  Milton  and  for  the 


136  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

ancient  classics  he  was  enabled  to  cultivate 
the  qualities  of  imagination,  melody,  and 
nature  which  are  essential  to  poetry.  He 
was  saved  from  his  century  by  his  taste. 
He  was,  however,  so  exceptional  in  this  that 
his  practice  had  the  force  of  originality, 
being  an  innovation,  and  he  to  this  extent 
suffered  the  initial  contempt  that  a  poet 
often  receives  in  his  own  age.  But  he  was 
an  innovator,  a  pioneer  in  more  important 
ways.  It  is  obvious  in  his  learned  tastes  that 
he  was  not  only  in  advance  of  his  age,  but 
in  advance  along  the  whole  line.  His  study 
of  both  science  and  history  foreknew  the 
great  career  of  both  these  branches  in  the 
next  century.  He  was  an  archaeologist,  too, 
in  the  kingdom  of  which  many  of  us  now  live. 
And  besides  these  broad  premonitions  of  the 
age  to  come,  he  had  the  clarity  of  genius  in 
three  specific  particulars  in  his  own  art. 

The  first  of  these  prophetic  traits  was  his 
devotion  to  Greek.  It  is  true  that  in  this  he 
was  the  heir  of  Milton  and  the  humanists, 
but  he  went  forward  well  into  the  paths  of  our 
quite  different  modern  scholarship.  Three 
times  in  the  last  century  English  poetry 


GRAY  137 

has  been  dipped  in  Castaly  all  over,  and 
risen  radiant  from  the  bath :  in  the  person  of 
Shelley  and  his  comrades,  in  that  of  Tenny- 
son, and  in  that  of  Swinburne.  Gray  was  the 
premonition  of  this,  and  a  forerunner  as  was 
none  of  his  contemporaries.  Secondly,  he 
was  a  discoverer  of  the  romance  of  primitive 
literature.  He  was  made  enthusiastic  by 
Ossian,  and  valued  that  verse  much  as  did 
men  upon  the  Continent.  He  was  attracted 
by  Gaelic,  and  the  monument  of  this  is  that 
Welsh  ode  from  which  I  have  read,  which  is 
poetically  his  greatest  work,  with  touches  of 
the  sublime  in  both  its  mood  and  language,  — 
a  great  English  ode.  In  obeying  this  taste 
he  showed  that  glimmer  of  the  romantic  dawn, 
then  far  away,  which  brought  with  it  the 
romance  of  the  Highlands  and  the  Sagas,  the 
old  Saxon  poetry,  the  Song  of  Roland,  and  all 
the  early  literature  of  the  romance  tongue, 
and  which  now  includes  the  ingathering  from 
all  primitive  peoples.  Thirdly,  he  was  a 
lover  of  wild  and  majestic  scenery,  and  of  the 
picturesque  beauty  of  the  English  land,  a 
landscape  lover,  and  even  in  his  prose  notes 
later  poets  have  found  ore  for  their  own 


138  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

golden  lines.  In  this  he  foreran  the  poetry 
of  nature,  which  became  so  large  an  element 
in  the  romantic  age.  He  did  not  philoso- 
phize nature,  nor  etherealize  it,  nor  idealize 
it;  but  he  saw  it  and  responded.  In  com- 
parison with  the  great  nature-poets,  such  as 
Wordsworth  and  Byron,  his  rendering  of 
nature  is  slight  indeed;  it  is,  perhaps,  no 
more  than  the  brightening  of  our  willow 
stems  in  the  clear  east  winds  of  morning 
hours,  but  it  is  a  sign  of  spring.  In  these 
three  ways,  each  a  main  direction  of  develop- 
ment, Gray  was  a  sharer  in  that  quality  of 
genius  by  which  it  is  symptomatic  of  the 
future,  sentient  of  it,  and  an  exponent  of  it 
before  the  fact. 

But,  though  we  may  trace  these  ties  of  con- 
sanguinity with  the  great  poets  and  find  a  few 
drops  of  the  royal  blood  in  Gray,  yet  if  we  are 
true  to  our  own  impression  and  speak  justly, 
I  think  that  neither  passion  nor  prescience  of 
change  are  much  in  our  minds  when  we  read 
his  verse.  It  is  true  that  his  poetry  displays 
more  passion  than  that  of  his  contemporaries, 
in  its  lyric  fulness  and  sweep;  but,  after  all, 
it  is  a  reminiscence  and  not  an  inspiration, 


GRAY  139 

it  is  stylistic  passion,  a  passion  for  the  roll  and 
fall  of  words,  a  passion  of  rhetoric,  and  it  is 
an  echo,  besides,  given  back  by  his  classical 
tastes.  He  likes  to  show  the  tone  and  com- 
pass of  his  instrument,  and  the  instrument 
is  the  lyre.  At  his  best  he  is  remembering 
Pindar;  and  as  in  that  picture  I  read  of  the 
Theban  eagle,  he  seems  to  be  rather  drawing 
on  paper  the  evolutions  of  the  bird  than  tak- 
ing flight  himself. 

Our  main  feeling  after  reading  him  is  that 
he  is  a  classic.  No  other  English  poet  gives 
the  feeiing  in  so  pure  a  form;  as  if,  except  for 
the  coloring  of  time,  he  might  have  written 
these  pieces,  that  seem  relics  and  fragments, 
being  so  few,  in  some  far-off  century  in  Ionia. 
One  critic,  Professor  Tovey,  the  best  it  seems 
to  me  of  Gray,  says,  very  appositely,  "that 
poetry  is  the  most  securely  immortal  which 
has  trained  nothing  and  can  lose  nothing  by 
+he  vicissitudes  of  sentiment  and  oDinion." 
That  is  a  mark  of  the  classic,  ^A  Gray  bears 
it.  To  rise  outside  of  the  circle  of  change  is 
hardly  given  to  mortals,  but  one  mode  of 
approaching  such  a  state  is  to  live  in  common- 
place.    Gray  was  a  contemplative  moralist, 


140  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

and  his  thought  is  commonplace;  but  if  he 
had  a  passion  for  anything,  it  was  for  perfec- 
tion, for  finish,  in  the  way  of  expression;  and 
by  virtue  of  this  instinct,  which  never  slept  in 
him,  he  dignified  and  adorned  the  common- 
place English  view  of  life.  He,  moreover, 
was  sombre;  and  he  chose  for  his  theme  the 
most  solemn  point  of  view  in  life,  the  resting- 
place  after  death.  He  was  very  sincere  in 
this;  you  will  find,  from  early  days,  in  his 
letters  to  his  friends  the  idea  that  men  are 
at  their  best,  that  the  soul  is  in  its  best  earthly 
estate,  in  the  times  of  their  bereavement. 
He  certainly  believed  this,  and  his  poetry  is  in- 
debted to  this  profound  belief.  The  "  Elegy ' ' 
is  a  universal  poem,  because  its  material  is 
so  commonplace  that  it  might,  as  he  sug- 
gested, have  been  written  in  prose,  but  it  is 
dignified  and  adorned,  perfected  in  expression 
till  it  seems  as  inevitable  in  every  word  as  the 
" inevitable  hour"  itself.  This  artistic  hand- 
ling of  the  theme  is  what  the  poet  in  Gray 
added  to  the  phraser  of  commonplaces;  the 
combination  works  the  miracle  that  such  a 
gentleman  as  Gray  was,  such  a  remote  scholar 
as  he  was,  should  turn  out  to  be  the  poet 


GRAY  141 

of  ordinary  people.  Gray,  as  I  said,  was  very 
humane;  in  essentials  an  ordinary  human 
nature  deepened  into  poetry  by  a  grave 
tenderness  of  feeling  and  expressing  himself 
with  a  pure  clarity  of  thought.  Though  a 
classic,  he  does  not  belong  with  the  great 
poets.  His  work  reminds  me  most  often  of 
the  minor  craftsmanship  of  the  Greek  arti- 
sans, who  made  of  common  clay  for  common 
use  the  images  and  funeral  urns;  such  seems 
to  me  the  material  of  his  poems;  but  in  form 
how  perfect  they  are,  both  for  grace  and 
dignity,  and  they  are  adorned,  like  the  Greek 
vases,  with  designs,  little  pictures,  imitated 
from  and  echoing  the  greater  arts.  If  the 
poetic  fire  in  them  be  rather  a  warmth  than  a 
flame,  yet  they  are  lovely  receptacles  of  its 
half -extinct  ashes. 


VI 

TASSO 

The  poetic  temperament  is  consanguineous 
in  all  the  poets,  and  hence  in  passing  from 
one  to  another  one  is  always  noticing  some 
sign  of  kinship.  Tasso  reminds  us  of  certain 
traits  of  both  Gray  and  Byron;  the  classical 
scholarship  of  the  one  and  the  Mediterranean 
quality  of  the  other  ally  them  to  the  Italian, 
and  the  melancholy  which  in  one  was  an 
elegy  of  the  churchyard  and  in  the  other 
an  elegy  of  nations,  becomes  in  Tasso  an 
elegy  of  life  itself;  moreover,  there  was  in 
Tasso's  personality  an  irritable  self-conscious- 
ness that  recalls  Byron's  egoistical  sensitive- 
ness. In  another  way  Tasso  so  exceeded 
Gray  in  power,  and  Byron  in  charm,  that 
he  seems  out  of  their  class ;  and  he  has  always 
been  in  men's  memories  so  signal  an  example 

142 


TASSO  143 

of  the  misfortune  that  attends  the  poets  as 
to  seem  almost  solitary  in  his  miseries. 

He  was  by  his  nature  exposed  to  every  acute 
feeling;  and  his  education  was  such  as  to 
increase  his  peril,  and  make  his  sorrow  sure. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  distinguished  poet, 
of  noble  family,  and  born  at  Sorrento;  his 
memory  still  haunts  the  place,  but  his  resi- 
dence there  was  brief,  and  his  life  is  associated 
rather  with  the  north  of  Italy,  whence  his 
family  came  from  a  town  near  Venice. 
Still  a  child,  he  was  separated  from  his  mother, 
his  father  being  in  trouble  and  a  wanderer, 
and  he  never  saw  her  afterward;  it  is  prob- 
able that  she  was  poisoned.  He  joined  his 
father,  and  was  educated  at  the  court  of 
Urbino,  and  the  Universities  of  Padua  and 
Bologna.  He  was  an  extraordinarily  preco- 
cious child,  and  while  still  at  Sorrento  had 
been  given  into  the  hands  of  the  Jesuit  fathers, 
who  impressed  upon  him  that  religiousness 
which  so  deeply  marked  him  and  was  the 
cause  of  much  of  his  suffering.  He  took  his 
first  communion  at  the  age  of  nine;  he  recited 
original  verses  and  speeches  at  the  age  of  ten ; 
and  while  yet  but  eighteen,  he  published  a 


144  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

considerable  poem,  "  Rinaldo,"  which  imme- 
diately gave  him  great  reputation  in  Italy, 
and  determined  his  career. 

He  entered  the  service  of  the  Duke  of 
Ferrara,  with  whose  name  his  biography  is 
most  closely  joined.  His  life  is  obscure  with 
mysteries  that  time  has  not  cleared  away.  He 
was  a  favorite  of  the  Duke;  yet  in  the  height 
of  his  fame,  the  Duke  put  him  in  prison  and 
kept  him  there  for  over  seven  years,  in  spjte 
of  protests  and  petitions  from  princes  and 
prelates  and  other  persons  of  importance. 
It  was  long  supposed  that  the  reason  was 
Tasso's  devotion  to  the  Duke's  sister,  who 
was  his  friend  and  the  lady  of  his  sonnets. 
The  weight  of  opinion  now  is  that,  whatever 
concurring  causes  there  may  have  been, 
Tasso's  own  condition  and  conduct  gave 
sufficient  excuse  for  restraint.  He  had  with- 
in him  the  germs  of  insanity,  and  with  every 
year  they  seem  to  have  shown  more  violent 
manifestation.  He  was  full  of  suspicion  and 
resentments,  and  repeatedly  had  left  his 
patron  suddenly  and  gone  to  others,  only 
to  return  again;  he  had  hallucinations  also; 
and,  as  time  went  on,  he  saw  and  conversed 


TASSO  145 

with  spirits;  sometimes  it  was  his  worldly 
or  literary  affairs,  sometimes  his  religious 
fears  that  were  the  motives  and  subjects  of 
this  mental  disturbance;  the  Duke  said  that 
he  kept  Tasso  confined  in  order  to  cure  him. 
He  was  allowed  full  liberty  of  correspond- 
ence, and  was  seen  by  friends  and  visitors. 
Montaigne  so  saw  him,  —  the  poet  being 
asleep  apparently  and  shown  by  his  jailer. 
Tasso 's  letters  are  full  of  details  and  terrible 
complaints;  but  how  much  of  what  he  wrote 
may  he  not  have  fancied?  The  facts  are  in- 
soluble. Some  ascribe  his  madness  to  his 
love,  some  to  his  religious  education.  At  all 
events  the  care  of  the  insane  was  then  but 
a  poor  sort  of  medicine,  and  prisons  in  those 
days  were  places  of  negligence,  filth,  and  sick- 
ness. If  only  a  small  part  of  what  Tasso 
relates  of  his  confinement  is  true,  it  is  enough 
to  justify  the  pity  that  he  has  always  re- 
ceived. It  is  singular,  if  there  were  no  other 
reason  for  the  Duke's  conduct  than  the  poet's 
mental  state,  that  he  should  so  obstinately 
have  refused  to  let  him  go  into  the  care  of  other 
princes  and  courts  who  were  anxious  to 
receive  and  aid  him.     At  last  he  was  released ; 


146  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

and  after  that  time  he  lived  mainly  at  Naples 
and  Rome,  where  he  died  at  the  age  of  fifty 
years,  just  before  he  was  to  be  publicly 
crowned  with  laurel  in  the  Capitol. 

It  does  not  appear  that,  except  for  a  few 
outbursts  of  violence,  his  insanity  was  such 
as  to  interfere  with  the  usual  action  of  his 
intellectual  powers  as  a  scholar  and  a  poet; 
the  higher  faculties  were  left  untouched, 
while  his  sense  of  fact  was  subject  to  delusion. 
His  young  friend,  Manso,  was  a  witness  of  a 
conversation  at  Naples  between  Tasso  and  the 
spirit  with  whom  he  talked;  both  voices, 
says  Manso,  were  Tasso's,  though  he  did  not 
seem  aware  of  it.  Such  was  Tasso's  madness, 
—  an  over-excitement  of  genius;  in  conse- 
quence he  passed  much  of  his  life  in  prison 
or  in  wanderings  from  city  to  city  in  Italy, 
often  with  much  hardship,  but  oftener  treated 
with  kindness  and  great  honor,  except  that 
at  Ferrara  the  fact  of  his  fame  and  his  favor 
in  the  earlier  years  exposed  him  to  the 
jealous  persecution  natural  to  a  small  court. 
He  was  a  man  very  masculine  in  appearance, 
uncommonly  tall,  broad-shouldered,  grave  in 
demeanor,    of    the   blond   type,   with  blue 


TASSO  147 

eyes,  well-exercised  in  the  use  of  arms. 
He  stammered,  and  seldom  laughed,  and  was 
slow  in  talk.  But  this  portrait  is  from  his 
last  years,  and  the  pale  sunken  cheeks  and 
worn  look,  which  are  also  mentioned,  belong 
rather  to  the  victim  of  life  than  to  the  young 
poet  who  wrote  the  great  Italian  epic,  "Je- 
rusalem Delivered." 

Tasso  was  a  voluminous  writer.  His 
works  fill  thirty-three  large  volumes;  but 
his  fame  is  comprised  within  the  limits  of  this 
epic,  and  of  another  small  pastoral  drama, 
"Aminta,"  which  is  related  to  his  genius 
somewhat  as  "Hero  and  Leander"  is  to 
Marlowe.  Apart  from  the  brutal  miseries 
of  his  life,  the  true  and  unavoidable  tragedy 
of  it  lay  in  a  conflict  which  took  place  within 
his  own  nature.  He  was  a  poet  with  the 
qualities  of  one;  but  his  temperament  was 
developed  in  a  double  way.  On  the  one  hand 
it  was  an  artistic  nature  grounded  in  scholar- 
ship, not  unlike  Gray  in  that  respect;  on  the 
other  hand  it  was  a  religious  nature  grounded 
in  the  asceticism  and  exaltation  of  the  Jesuit 
training  of  his  precocious  childhood.  The 
two  natures  were  contradictory;   and  in  the 


148  THE   INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

lifelong  struggle  between  them,  reflected  in 
his  literary  work,  the  religious  nature  finally 
triumphed.  In  his  last  years  he  rewrote 
his  epic,  and  left  out  its  charm  in  obedience 
to  his  conscience;  but  fortunately  the  original 
version  was  already  in  the  hands  of  the  world, 
and  the  later  one  is  now  completely  forgotten. 
He  had  chosen  his  subject  and  sketched 
out  parts,  at  least,  of  the  poem  before  he 
was  twenty  years  old;  and  as  he  composed, 
he  labored  over  the  verse,  and  refined  and 
revised  it,  with  great  care.  It  was  the 
period  known  as  the  Catholic  Reaction, 
during  which  the  Church  crushed  the  Ref- 
ormation in  Italy  and  withered  the  Renais- 
sance there,  and  thus  prepared  for  Italy  the 
centuries  of  her  servitude  from  which  she 
has  arisen  only  in  our  day.  Tasso  was 
acutely  anxious  that  his  poem  should  be  in 
harmony  with  Catholic  truth  and  pious 
feeling,  and  he  submitted  it  to  ecclesiastical 
criticism;  the  worry  of  his  mind  over  the 
trouble  that  thus  arose  was,  it  must  be  thought, 
one  grave  cause  of  his  malady;  but  though 
he  modified  the  verse,  he  did  not  then  en- 
tirely destroy  what  he  loved  so  much,  its 


TASSO  149 

poetic  beauty.  He  had  chosen  a  Christian 
theme,  the  recovery  of  Christ's  sepulchre  by 
the  crusading  knights,  and  he  would  treat 
it  worthily,  with  seriousness  and  piety;  but 
nevertheless  the  poetic  art  was  a  tradition, 
and  he  was  bound,  as  a  scholar  with  the 
tastes  and  principles  of  the  Renaissance,  to 
obey  the  tradition  of  Homer  and  Virgil  no 
less  than  he  was  obliged  as  a  faithful  son  of 
the  Church  to  listen  respectfully  to  the  views 
of  Puritan  Cardinals.  He  must  write  a 
classic  epic;  and  the  poem  is,  in  fact,  not 
only  classical  in  its  general  conduct  and 
method,  but  in  detail  echoes  the  " Iliad"  and 
the  "iEneid"  much  as  Milton  echoes  the 
Bible,  and  a  reader  familiar  with  the  classics 
takes  the  same  pleasure  in  these  echoes 
that  a  reader  familiar  with  the  Bible  takes 
in  the  words  and  imagery  of  "  Paradise  Lost." 
The  epic,  however,  when  it  came  into 
Tasso's  hands,  had  added  something  to  the 
classic  tradition,  and  had  changed  it  in  im- 
portant particulars;  especially  two  things 
had  been  brought  prominently  forward, 
namely,  magic,  and  the  interest  of  love.  The 
presence  of  these  two  new  elements  in  their 


150  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

degree  of  development  made  of  the  epic  so 
different  a  thing,  that  a  new  name  was 
coined  to  describe  it,  and  it  was  called 
a  romantic  epic  in  opposition  to  the  older 
style.  Tasso's  theme  was  an  admirable 
epic  subject;  it  was  noble  in  itself,  and  one 
in  which  the  powers  of  heaven  and  hell, 
whose  participation  was  thought  necessary 
in  epic  verse,  could  appropriately  be  intro- 
duced; the  combatants  on  both  sides  were 
worthy  champions,  so  that  the  martial  in- 
terest could  be  well  maintained;  and  the 
subject  was  made  Italian  and  brought  home 
to  the  present  hour  by  the  link  that  bound 
the  poem  to  the  House  of  Este,  at  Ferrara. 
In  fact,  the  entire  ground  of  the  poem  was 
near  to  the  contemporary  age,  in  the  point 
that  the  Mohammedan  power  was  still  a 
dreaded  foe  and  held  the  Mediterranean,  so 
that  the  feeling  of  hostility  was  acute,  and, 
besides,  the  physical  aspect  of  the  Saracen 
East  was  well  known;  Italy  and  Christen- 
dom still  faced  that  way.  The  taking  of 
Jerusalem  was  a  more  contemporary  topic 
than  we  are  apt  to  think,  and  the  poem  ap- 
pealed to  a  living  fear  and  hatred;    thus, 


TASSO  151 

though  not  a  national  poem,  it  had  some  of 
the  qualities  of  one,  and  it  stirred  a  martial 
ardor  not  wholly  extinct. 

The  martial  interest  is  in  the  foreground, 
and  is  developed  in  the  verse  to  the  greatest 
degree  possible.  The  course  of  the  war  is 
deployed  with  skill,  so  as  to  open  an  ever 
wider  field  of  operation  and  to  increase 
steadily  in  importance  and  interest  till  it 
culminates  in  the  fall  of  the  city.  In  de- 
tail every  kind  of  warfare  is  depicted,  —  the 
single  combat  by  challenge,  the  personal 
encounters  by  accident,  the  melee  of  the 
armies  and  the  individual  fight  in  its  midst, 
the  night  attack,  the  siege,  the  assault, 
—  every  variety  of  battle,  even  to  the  cut- 
ting off  and  total  destruction  of  a  corps 
marching  to  the  assistance  of  the  Christians 
under  a  Danish  chief,  which  may  perhaps 
be  exemplified  for  us  by  such  an  action  as 
the  Indian  massacre  of  Custer's  command. 
Tasso's  descriptions  of  these  scenes  are  ad- 
mirable for  spirit  and  variety  of  detail, 
and  I  find  his  military  operations  less  tedious 
than  those  of  most  epics.  In  the  contrast 
of  the  two  civilizations  he  is  also  successful, 


152  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

and  he  renders  the  opposition  of  creed  and 
manners,  the  barbaric  and  the  pagan  to  the 
civilized  and   the  Christian,  with  vividness 
and  yet  not  so  as  to  degrade  the  enemy. 
In  the  characterization,  again,  on  both  sides 
he  is  excellent,  and  he  gives  much  distinct- 
ness even  to  the  minor  persons,  which  is 
unusual  in  epics,  while  the  heroes  are  vigor- 
ously and  diversely  drawn.     The  main  he- 
roes are,  of  course,  removed  from  the  field 
early  in  the  action  by  one  device  and  another 
in  order  to  give  the  others  their  opportunity 
to  act,  while  the  greater  characters  them- 
selves come  in  to  make  the  climax  of  interest 
and  valor  toward  the  end.     All  this  is  in  the 
ancient  classical  manner,  like  the  "iEneid" 
and  " Iliad."     So  is  the  bringing  in  of  the 
supernatural  powers,  the  angels  on  one  side 
and  the  devils  on  the  other,  corresponding 
to  the  partisanship  of  the  gods  in  the  old 
epics ;  but  here  Tasso  suffers  from  the  power- 
ful  rivalry   of   Milton.     Tasso's   devils   are 
merely   mediaeval   monsters,  and  his  angels 
have  little  to  do.     His  imagination  would  in 
any  case  have  been  checked  in  its  free  action 
by  Catholic  scruples. 


TASSO  153 

The  place  of  the  old  gods  of  Olympus  is, 
however,  really  taken  by  the  romantic  ele- 
ment of  magic,  in  obedience  to  which  indeed 
the  devils  also  act;  and  it  is  not  in  the  court 
of  Heaven,  but  in  the  witch,  Armida,  that  the 
counterpart  of  Juno's  hatred  for  the  Trojans 
is  to  be  found.  Magic  had  been  popularized 
in  poetry,  especially  by  Ariosto,  and  Tasso 
followed  here  this  master  and  the  popular 
taste.  Perhaps  to  us  the  poem  is  much 
enfeebled  thereby  and  loses  reality;  it  seems 
so  to  me,  at  least;  it  becomes  almost  a  fable, 
Arabian.  On  the  other  hand,  magic  as  an 
artistic  device  frees  the  fancy  of  Tasso 
and  makes  him  the  master  of  surprise.  It 
is  here  that  he  begins  to  be  himself,  and  to 
write  with  his  own  unaided  hand ;  but  it  is  in 
the  second  element  that  he  derived  from  the 
romantic  epic  —  the  element  of  love  —  that 
he  is  the  master  and  comes  to  his  own.  If  he 
treats  of  battle  in  all  its  phases,  it  is  from  a 
sense  of  duty,  in  part;  but  he  depicts  love 
in  its  various  forms  because  it  is  his  pleasure. 
War  he  learned  from  other  men's  books, 
and  mastered  by  imagination;  but  in  love 
he  was  lessoned  only  by  his  own  heart,  and 


154  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

in  the  story  he  gave  out  experience.  It  is 
the  more  singular  because  he  was  not  of  an 
amorous  nature,  but  was  rather  indulgent 
to  ascetic  feelings.  His  imagination  was 
warm,  and  it  is  rather  the  sentiment  than 
the  passion  of  love  that  he  depicts;  and  he 
always  blends  it  with  nobleness  of  nature. 
Dante's  line  —  "love  is  but  one  thing  with 
the  gentle  heart"  —  might  be  the  formula 
of  all  these  varied  scenes. 

In  the  second  canto  he  introduces  one 
such  episode,  and  one  that  was  so  cherished 
by  him  that  he  refused  to  cut  it  out  at  the 
bidding  of  the  ecclesiastics  who  advised  him. 
It  is  the  story  of  the  Christian  maid,  So- 
phronia,  who  is  drawn  almost  like  a  nun, 
and  who  to  save  her  people  confesses  to  an 
act  that  had  incensed  the  tyrant  ruler  of 
Jerusalem;  she  stands  at  the  stake  to  be 
burned,  when  her  lover,  Olindo,  who  had 
not  dared  to  show  his  love,  recognizes  her, 
and  at  once  confesses  to  the  same  act;  it 
is  plain  that  both  are  guiltless,  but  both  are 
condemned  to  burn  at  the  same  stake.  As  the 
flames  approach,  he  tells  her  his  love  as  being 
about  to  die.     The  execution,  however,  is 


TASSO  155 

stayed  in  a  natural  way,  and  the  two  are 
released  to  a  life  together.  Such  a  happy 
issue  is  rare,  nevertheless,  in  Tasso.  It  was 
believed  that  in  Sophronia  he  drew  the 
figure  of  his  lady,  Leonora,  the  Duke's  sister, 
and  in  Olindo  the  veiled  love  he  bore  her; 
and  thus  in  this  fable  pleaded  his  own  cause. 

In  the  other  great  instances  of  his  por- 
traiture of  love  the  persons  are  the  leading 
characters  of  the  poem,  and  not  introduced 
merely  episodically.  He  drew  three  types. 
Tancred,  the  chief  Christian  hero  after 
Rinaldo,  is  in  love  with  the  Saracen  warrior- 
maid,  Clorinda;  in  his  passion  he  is  the  typi- 
cal knight  of  chivalry.  Thus  he  fell  in  love 
with  her  at  first  sight,  and  her  face  at  any 
time  makes  him  oblivious  to  all  else,  even  the 
call  of  honor  in  battle;  she,  being  an  Amazon 
and  a  pagan,  is  entirely  indifferent  to  him; 
it  is  only  at  the  last  moment  and  by  a  mir- 
acle that,  when  being  vizored  they  fight 
and  he  kills  her,  in  the  act  of  dying  she  asks 
him  for  baptism  and  is  reconciled.  She  after- 
wards appears  to  him  in  a  dream  and  con- 
fesses her  love.  Tancred  is  also  the  hero  of 
the  second  type,  Erminia,  a  Saracen  princess 


156  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

whom  he  had  rescued  and  treated  with  great 
kindness  and  who  fell  in  love  with  his  gentle- 
ness and  nobleness.  She  was  no  warrior, 
but  a  tender  woman  to  whom  love  gave 
courage,  and  she  stole  away  from  Jerusalem 
by  night  in  the  armor  of  Clorinda,  to  go  to 
the  Christian  camp  and  heal  him  when  he  was 
wounded,  for  she  understood  the  art  of 
healing;  but  she  was  frightened  on  the  way 
and  fled  to  some  shepherds,  with  whom  she 
remains  until  near  the  end  of  the  story, 
when  she  returns  to  care  for  him  after  Clo- 
rinda's  death.  The  third  type  is  the  love  of 
the  witch,  Armida,  for  Rinaldo ;  she  enchains 
this  youth,  the  Achilles  of  the  poem,  mean- 
ing to  destroy  him,  but  is  overcome  by  her 
love  for  him,  and  transports  him  to  her  gar- 
den in  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  whence  he  is 
rescued  by  holy  aid  and  recalled  to  the  war. 
He  leaves  her,  and  she  follows,  seeking 
revenge,  but  still  in  love,  and  attends  the 
pagan  army;  in  the  final  defeat  she  is  saved 
by  Rinaldo,  and  desires  to  become  a  Christian 
through  her  love  for  him. 

These  three  poetic  types  of  womanhood, 
the   tragic   type  in   Clorinda,  the  pathetic 


TASSO  157 

type  in  Erminia,  and  the  romantic  type  in 
Armida,  give  a  wide  compass  to  Tasso  in 
the  interpretation  of  the  passion.  In  each 
case  love  overcomes,  equally  master  over 
magic,  over  the  coldness  of  the  Amazon,  and 
over  woman's  simple  heart;  in  all  love  is 
victorious.  The  two  knights  also  yield  to 
love;  but  the  passion  is  represented  rather 
in  the  women  than  the  men,  and  hence  the 
poem  is  most  famous  for  these  three  types  of 
womanhood  rather  than  for  its  heroic  figures, 
and  more  for  love  than  for  war.  In  Spen- 
ser's "  Faery  Queen,"  you  remember,  in  the 
same  way  the  female  characters  excel  the 
knights  in  interest.  Tasso  is  thus  peculiarly 
the  poet  of  love;  excellent  as  he  is  in  the 
martial  and  truly  epic  part  of  his  task,  it  is 
in  the  romantic  part  and  in  the  passion,  that 
is  rather  lyrical  than  epic,  that  he  is  a  su- 
preme and  unequalled  master.  It  is  natural 
to  find  that  the  traits  which  most  attract 
his  readers  are  those  that  depend  on  the 
predominance  of  love  in  the  verse. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  poem  that  its 
atmosphere  counts  for  more  than  its  sub- 
stance;   the  power  of   fascination  is  in  the 


158  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

atmosphere;  and,  in  fact,  the  substance 
itself  tends  to  pass  into,  to  evaporate  into, 
mere  atmosphere.  This  is  an  important 
point.  You  will  observe  in  reading  it,  for 
example,  how  large  a  part  the  landscape 
plays  in  giving  tone  to  the  most  charming 
scenes.  It  is,  of  course,  Italian  landscape 
that  is  used,  though  the  scene  is  Palestine. 
It  is,  moreover,  selected  Italian  landscape,  — 
seashore,  glens,  quiet  places  in  the  hills; 
and,  besides,  this  landscape  is  brightened 
and  adorned,  in  the  manner  of  painting  or 
of  stage  illusion.  One  recalls  especially  the 
moonlight  scenes,  such  as  that  where  the 
light  touching  the  armor  of  Erminia  betrays 
her  on  her  flight,  —  or  the  pastoral  scenes, 
such  as  the  remote  spot  where  she  found  ref- 
uge with  the  shepherd  boys;  and  again  the 
garden  scenes,  especially  those  of  Armida's 
island,  which  gave  to  Spenser  his  Bower 
of  Bliss  and  to  Milton  his  Eden. 

It  has  been  noticed  that  light  rather  than 
color  characterizes  the  poem ;  it  is  filled  with 
light  and  chiaroscuro,  but  not  with  hues; 
in  fact,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  place  of  color 
is,  as  it  were,  taken  by  sound.     It  is  true 


TASSO  159 

that  the  poem  has  a  landscape  setting, 
characteristically  Italian,  quiet,  reposeful,  of 
ideal  beauty;  but  it  has  also  another  setting 
in  the  sense  of  hearing,  which  is  constantly 
appealed  to,  as  if  music  in  the  strict  sense 
were  an  element  of  the  scene.  It  is  not 
merely  that  the  birds  are  always  there,  but 
sound  in  many  forms  breathes  in  various 
concords.  A  brief  example  is  the  charm 
that  greets  Rinaldo  in  the  enchanted  wood  — 

"a  sound 
Sweet  as  the  airs  of  Paradise  upsprings ; 
Hoarse  roars  the  shallow  brook ;  the  leaves  around, 
Sigh  to  the  fluttering  of  the  light  wind's  wings; 
Her  ravishing  sweet  dirge  the  cygnet  sings, 
Loud  mourn  the  answering  nightingales ;  sad  shells, 
Flutes,  human  voices  tuned  to  golden  strings, 
And  the  loud  surging  organ's  glorious  swells,  — 

all  these  make  up  a  hidden  orchestra  heard 
in  one.     And  again,  a  little  farther  on,  it  rises : 

"Impearled  with  manna  was  each  fresh  leaf  nigh  : 
Honey  and  golden  gums  the  rude  trunks  weep ; 
Again  is  heard  that  strange  wild  harmony 
Of  songs  and  sorrows,  plaintive,  mild  and  deep ; 
But  the  sweet  choirs  that  still  such  tenor  keep 
With  the  swans,  winds  and  waves,  no  ear  can  trace 
To  their  concealed  abode  in  shade  or  steep ; 


160  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

Nor  harp,  nor  horn,  nor  form  of  human  face, 
Look  where  he  would,  was  seen  in  all  the  shady  place.' 

Such  a  hidden  harmony  and  secret  accom- 
paniment go  through  the  poem,  and  sphere  it 
in  music  as  the  landscape  spheres  it  in  visible 
beauty.  It  is  as  if  various  belts,  like  Sat- 
urn's rings,  were  wound  about  the  poem 
and  shed  colored  light  upon  it. 

The  Italian  is  a  subtle  genius,  and  Tasso 
excels  in  subtlety.  It  is  a  thing  difficult  to 
describe,  but  more  even  than  by  landscape 
and  music  the  poem  is  enveloped  in  emo- 
tionalism, of  which  perhaps  the  constant  ap- 
peal to  pathos  is  the  most  obvious  form. 
A  simple  detached  instance  is  the  death  of 
the  Soldan's  page,  in  the  ninth  canto,  slain 
in  battle  where  like  a  child  he  was  playing  at 
war.  Every  artifice  is  used  to  enhance  the 
mere  pity  of  his  savage  death.  Pathos, 
however,  pervades  the  poem.  Emotionalism 
is  still  more  intensely  present  in  the  tragic 
and  pathetic  and  romantic  treatment  of  love 
directly  in  the  three  types  already  mentioned. 
It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  characteris- 
tic phrase  of  Tasso  is  that  by  which  he  so 
often  expresses  his'failure  to  express  himself, 


TASSO  161 

—  that  is,  his  sense  of  the  inexpressible,  — 
the  phrase  non  so  die,  "I  know  not  what." 
So  he  describes  the  last  words  of  Clorinda 
when  she  asked  baptism  of  Tancred,  who  had 
killed  her  — 

"  Like  dying  lyres  heard  far  at  close  of  day, 
Sounding  I  know  not  what  in  the  soothed  ear 
Of  sweetest  sadness,  —  the  faint  words  made  way." 

Tasso  thus  habitually  at  the  highest  moment 
of  feeling  takes  refuge  in  the  mystery  of  the 
unexpressed. 

It  is  evident  that  such  qualities  as  these, 
beauty  of  such  a  type,  such  a  use  of  music, 
such  pathos,  sorrow,  and  yearning  of  life, 
cannot  but  impart  weakness  to  a  martial  epic 
poem,  as  such,  and  diffuse  through  it  a  re- 
laxation of  the  heroic  quality.  The  charac- 
ter of  the  heroes  is  enfeebled  in  many  ways, 

—  in  Tancred  and  Rinaldo  by  the  love 
element  and  in  Godfrey,  the  leader,  by  his 
prudence;  it  is  rather  among  the  Saracens 
and  in  the  minor  Christian  knights  that  the 
heroic  quality  is  most  purely  preserved,  the 
simple  martial  manhood  of  the  enterprise; 
but,  in  proportion  as  the  inward  life  enters 

M 


162  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

into  the  characterization,  as  the  psychology- 
becomes  interesting,  the  epic  power  is  dimin- 
ished. 

This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  in 
the  characteristic  part  of  his  poem  Tasso 
obeys  a  lyrical  impulse.  The  emotion  to 
which  he  is  most  sensitive  is  not  martial, 
but  tender;  the  things  he  loves  are  not  the 
things  of  war,  but  of  charm;  and  more  and 
more,  as  his  true  mood  grows  upon  him,  he 
emerges  in  the  region  of  mere  beauty  and 
delight,  and  sings,  not  the  epic  of  action, 
but  the  lyric  of  feeling.  Once,  indeed,  in 
the  climax  of  the  garden  of  Armida,  the 
highest  point  of  the  mood  is  frankly  given  in 
a  song.  With  all  his  epical  dexterity,  Tasso 
is  primarily  lyrical  by  genius,  and  his  love  of 
landscape,  music,  and  the  emotional  dis- 
burdening of  his  spirit  are  forms  of  his  lyri- 
cism. Beauty,  grace,  kindness,  gentleness, 
nobility,  are  the  things  he  loved  and  re- 
sponded to,  and  rather  with  a  lament  than 
with  a  psean.  For  the  scene  of  life  is  pre- 
sented with  vigor  in  the  action,  it  is  true, 
by  an  intellectual  tour  de  force  in  description, 
of  which  he  had  learned  the  art  from  books 


TASSO  163 

such  as  Homer;  but  the  scene  of  life  is 
also  and  more  markedly  represented  with 
great  melancholy  in  the  thought  and  after- 
issue  of  the  action,  with  unceasing  and  ir- 
repressible sadness.  The  history  of  love  in 
the  poem  is  nowhere  a  happy  history,  and 
Tasso  pleaded  this  fact  in  his  strife  with  the 
ecclesiastics  who  disapproved  of  these  scenes. 
The  whole  field  of  life  here  represented  is  one 
of  sorrow  and  death,  —  the  woes  of  men; 
but  the  great  test  of  the  militant  spirit 
of  life  —  delight  in  victory  —  is  strangely 
absent.  There  is  no  joy  of  victory  any- 
where in  the  poem.  Though  Jerusalem 
falls,  and  the  knights  enter  in  triumph,  this 
seems  a  very  unimportant  incident  at  the 
end,  and  merely  winds  up  the  poem.  The 
poem  is  really  done,  when  we  know  the  fate 
of  the  lovers  in  it. 

So  far  from  victory  being  felt  in  the  poem, 
it  is  the  sense  of  the  difficulty  of  life,  of  the 
thwarting  of  life,  of  its  sad  fates,  —  the  sense, 
in  a  word,  of  the  unaccomplished,  —  that  most 
remains  with  the  reader.  The  feeling  of  the 
inexpressible  —  the  non  so  che  of  his  favorite 
phrase  —  is  one  with  the  feeling  of  the  un- 


164  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

attained.  Tasso's  view  of  life  thus  ends  not 
in  action,  but  in  an  attitude  toward  life,  a 
certain  cast  of  thought  and  habit  of  emo- 
tion. It  is  not  merely  that  action  is  not  the 
true  subject  and  interest  of  the  poem;  but 
rather  emotion  divorced  from  action,  pure 
emotion;  mere  feeling  in  its  own  realm  is 
the  characteristic  trait  and  charm  of  this 
verse;  and  therein  lies  Tasso's  original 
genius  as  distinct  from  all  that  he  inherited 
from  the  old  masters.  He  was  an  extremely 
sensitive  poet,  with  an  excitable  imagination 
cultivated  in  its  exercise  by  the  most  highly 
developed  artistic  tradition,  not  only  in 
poetry  but  in  all  the  arts;  but  from  his  pre- 
cocious adolescence  to  the  close  of  his  career, 
he  was  brought  in  contact  with  real  life  only 
in  the  sphere  of  the  sentiments,  and  for  the 
most  part  only  in  the  region  of  an  ideal  love 
for  the  lady  Leonora.  His  touch  on  life  had 
been  almost  exclusively  through  the  imagi- 
nation, and  his  pleasures  and  sorrows  had 
been  in  that  realm,  in  a  true  sense.  No 
wonder  he  became  visionary  even  to  the 
point  of  mental  disease,  that  is,  of  hallucina- 
tion; but  in  the  sphere  outside  of  hallucina- 


TASSO  165 

tion  his  ordinary  daily  life  was  still  imagina- 
tive. It  was  natural  that  there  should  grow 
up  in  such  a  genius  a  prepossession  for 
emotional  states  little  related  to  action,  a 
love  for  emotion  just  for  its  own  sake,  as  if  it 
were  the  effect  of  a  drug. 

The  point  of  culture  he  marks  lies,  thus, 
in  emotionalism  toward  beauty  and  joy, 
sensuously  felt  through  their  charm,  but 
becoming  an  end  in  itself  for  the  sake  of  the 
emotion  only.  This  is  the  secret  of  his  love 
of  music,  for  it  is  in  music  that  emotion  is 
most  freely  experienced  in  this  pure  form 
disjoined  from  action.  In  his  poetry  art  is 
seen  on  the  way  to  music,  and  his  lyrical 
passion  is  the  intermediate  stage.  It  is 
historically  plain,  because  his  pastoral  drama 
"Aminta,"  in  which  these  qualities  I  have 
dwelt  on  are  shown  free  from  any  epic  en- 
tanglement, was  the  beginning  of  pastoral 
drama  in  Italy,  —  that  is,  it  ushered  in  Italian 
opera.  Tasso,  by  virtue  of  this  possession 
of  his  genius  by  emotion  for  its  own  sake, 
is  the  forerunner  and  prophet  of  the  age  of 
music  soon  to  dawn  after  him,  and  in  the 
coming  of  which  he  assisted. 


166  THE   INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

You  will  observe  that  Tasso  exemplifies 
with  singular  precision  the  main  principles 
that  were  laid  down  with  respect  to  the  gen- 
eral nature  of  poetic  energy.  Though  he 
was  a  scholar  from  boyhood  and  steeped  in 
the  academic  learning  of  his  time,  and  master 
of  the  earlier  tradition  of  literature  ancient 
and  modern,  and  was  so  expert  with  his 
mind  that  he  could,  like  Pope,  compose  in  his 
teens  a  work  seemingly  mature  and  ex- 
cellent enough  to  make  him  at  once,  like 
Byron,  and  younger  than  Byron,  the  best 
poet  of  his  time,  nevertheless,  it  was  not  by 
this  weight  and  compass  of  learning  nor  by 
anything  intellectual  that  his  genius  suc- 
ceeded; but  it  was  by  his  power  of  emotion. 
Emotion  is  found  to  be,  in  a  singularly  pure 
form,  the  substance  of  his  epic,  its  centre  of 
interest,  its  core  from  which  its  power  radi- 
ates. Secondly,  though  by  the  traits  of  his 
epic,  its  classical  and  romantic  handling, 
its  relation  to  luxury  and  the  arts,  its  piety, 
and  much  else  both  in  structure  and  detail, 
he  belongs  to  the  Renaissance,  and  the  great 
emotional  upheaval  due  to  that  rebirth  of 
the  soul  and  senses  of  man,  and  is  in  fact 


TASSO  167 

the  last  child  of  that  age  in  his  own  land, 
and  hence  is  to  be  counted  in  that  group, 
nevertheless,  he  is  also  a  forward-looking 
man,  and  announces  the  new  and  approach- 
ing age  of  music.  In  the  most  intimate  and 
personal  part  of  his  genius  he  deals  with 
emotion  as  it  is  under  the  condition  of  music, 
and  attempts  in  poetry  the  characteristic 
effects  of  music,  endeavoring  to  realize 
emotion  for  its  own  sake.  He  is  thus  in 
his  genius  prescient  of  the  change  of  the  mood 
in  the  race,  and  attaches  himself  to  a  modern 
time  by  the  link  of  the  opera  and  by  the  use 
of  his  imagination,  specially  in  the  highly 
artificial  forms  of  the  pastoral  and  of  magic; 
that  is,  he  frees  himself  as  much  as  possible 
from  realism  in  the  scene,  and  disengages 
emotion  from  actuality  in  the  manner  of  the 
opera.  It  is  unfortunate  for  his  fame  that  he 
thus  stood,  as  it  were,  between  two  arts, 
poetry  and  music.  Among  epic  poets,  he 
professed  to  fear  only  Camoens,  of  his  con- 
temporaries; his  inferiority  to  the  greatest, 
such  as  Homer  and  Virgil,  is  obvious,  and  in 
majesty  he  falls  short  compared  with  Milton; 
he  cannot  be  ranked  among  the  greatest  poets 


168  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

in  epic  verse.  The  reason  appears  to  be  that 
in  his  martial  verse  he  follows  a  literary 
tradition  and  is  at  best  doing  by  main  force 
what  others  had  done ;  while  in  his  emotional 
verse  he  is  experimenting  in  a  kind  of  art 
which  reaches  perfection  rather  in  music 
than  in  poetry.  He  was  too  late  for  martial 
epic;  he  was  too  early  for  musical  emotion; 
but  his  genius  foreknows  the  moods  of  music. 
Thirdly,  his  genius  is  greatest  and  most 
efficient  in  proportion  as  it  is  unconscious 
of  itself  in  its  art.  That  part  of  his  work 
which  was  intellectually  and  consciously  de- 
termined was  the  martial  part,  the  structure 
of  the  action  and  placing  of  the  episodes, 
the  imitations  of  his  predecessors,  —  all, 
in  brief,  that  he  derived  from  the  classical 
and  romantic  tradition,  from  books.  If  he 
had  done  only  this,  he  would  have  written 
only  a  respectable  poem,  like  a  hundred 
others,  which  would  have  soon  been  forgot- 
ten or  listed  only  in  the  history  of  his  coun- 
try's literature.  What  he  added  out  of  his 
own  heart,  —  the  poetry  of  love  ensphered 
in  landscape,  melody,  pathos,  sentiment, 
sensuousness,  —  and  seized  most  intimately 


TASSO  169 

and  passionately  in  the  form  of  an  inex- 
pressible longing  without  issue,  —  all  this 
was  the  flowering  of  the  unconscious,  the 
original  part  of  him,  —  that  which  was 
least  indebted  for  subject  or  method  to  other 
men  and  former  poets.  The  primacy  of 
emotion,  the  prescience  of  the  future,  the 
guiding  and  prevailing  power  of  the  uncon- 
scious element  in  his  genius  are  clearly  seen. 
The  characteristic  marks  are  just  as  plainly 
to  be  seen  in  his  personal  temperament  and 
worldly  fortunes.  A  precocious  boy,  he  had 
extraordinary  sensitiveness  and  extraordi- 
nary creative  faculty,  and  under  the  excite- 
ment of  a  fevered  and  unhappy  life  his  senses 
blended  with  his  creative  faculty  and  made 
him  a  visionary,  —  the  victim  of  his  facul- 
ties. He  was  a  courtier  and  a  scholar,  and 
both  are  careers  naturally  subject  to  annoy- 
ing jealousies,  to  envy  and  detraction  and 
intrigue;  he  had  no  power  of  wise  conduct 
in  unhappy  circumstances,  and  his  long  and 
miserable  imprisonment  in  the  flower  of  his 
manhood  was  the  result;  yet  in  his  life  he 
was  much  honored  and  befriended  in  general; 
his  fame,  which  he  highly  valued,  was  always 


170  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

a  solace  to  him.  Looking  beneath  the  ob- 
vious facts,  however,  it  appears  to  me  that 
one  reads  an  old  and  familiar  tragedy  of  life. 
He  was  from  birth  a  man  framed  for  the 
natural  enjoyment  of  life,  and  especially 
for  its  aesthetic  enjoyment;  he  was  a  man 
to  whom  beauty  and  delight  appealed  in  the 
most  noble,  sweet,  and  penetrating  way,  and 
his  original  sensitiveness  was  developed  to 
the  full  by  high  cultivation.  Two  barriers, 
nevertheless,  rose  between  him  and  life. 
He  loved  a  princess,  not  of  his  own  world, 
and  consequently  he  was  filled  with  that 
ideal  passion  which  is  the  tradition  of  Italian 
poetry  and  which  is  full  of  sentiment,  of  un- 
realized emotion.  Secondly,  he  was  trained 
by  the  Jesuit  fathers,  in  charge  of  his  boy- 
hood, to  an  ascetic  habit  and  view,  and  to 
a  fear  of  displeasing  heaven;  and,  as  time  went 
on,  this  element  in  him,  which  always  fought 
with  his  poetic  impulses  and  power,  made 
him  cancel  the  best  of  his  verse.  In  these 
two  ways  his  natural  enjoyment  of  life  was 
blocked.  He  responded  to  the  call  of  life 
with  his  senses  and  imagination ;  we  read  his 
true  nature,  in  this  way,  by  the  charm  of  the 


TASSO  171 

things  he  loved.  Yet,  under  the  conditions, 
it  is  not  strange  that  the  main  impression 
left  by  his  poetry  is  that  here  is  written  the 
despair  of  a  heart  in  love  with  life.  It  is 
this  despair  that  gives  such  poignancy  to  his 
pathos,  such  melancholy  to  the  verse,  and 
such  yearning  force  to  his  lyrical  cry  of  the 
beauty,  the  joy,  and  the  extinction  of  life. 


VII 

LUCRETIUS 

Last  year,  in  my  wanderings  through 
Sicily,  I  came  to  the  old  town  that  was  once 
Acragas,  and  I  had  the  happiness  to  abide 
there  quietly  for  a  while,  where  so  long  ago 
between  the  sea  and  the  mountains  stood 
what  Pindar  called  "the  most  beautiful 
city  of  mortals."  I  remember  I  would  go 
down  to  the  ruins,  where,  in  the  midst  of 
immense  broken  columns,  lay  on  the  ground 
a  great  stone  figure  of  a  Titan,  with  his  face 
looking  to  the  broad,  empty  blue  sky;  and 
it  seemed  to  me  like  an  unwritten  poem  of 
Victor  Hugo,  as  if  the  Titan  in  a  sort  of 
triumph  lay  there  on  his  back  in  the  centre 
of  the  fallen  temple  of  Zeus,  his  foe  and  op- 
pressor, and  looked  up  with  a  stony,  sardonic 
satisfaction  into  the  now  throneless  ether. 
It  was  a  Mediterranean  mood.     And  often, 

172 


LUCRETIUS  173 

wandering  about  through  the  region,  I 
remembered  that  sage  of  antiquity,  who  is  to 
us  hardly  more  than  a  sounding  name,  Em- 
pedocles,  —  about  whom  you  may  recall 
Arnold  wrote  a  poem  "Empedocles  on 
Etna,"  —  who  was  for  all  time  the  chief 
glory  of  Acragas.  He  was  a  poet  and  priest, 
a  man  of  science  and  affairs ;  even  —  as  he 
said  —  powerful  in  magic,  almost  with  divine 
power,  so  excelling  both  to  himself  and  the 
citizens  seemed  his  faculty.  He  occupied 
himself  with  great  works  of  public  utility, 
using  novel  means ;  he  opened  a  path  for  the 
north  wind  through  the  hills  in  order  to 
shield  the  city  from  the  heats  of  summer;  he 
turned  the  bed  of  a  river,  and  poured  it 
through  a  vast  marsh  and  so  drove  the  pes- 
tilence away  forever;  he  raised  a  woman 
from  seeming  death  by  his  medicinal  art ;  and 
it  is  little  wonder,  in  those  days,  that  when 
he  came  forth,  being  a  noble  of  the  state, 
tall,  clad  in  purple  robes  and  with  long 
streaming  hair,  and  walking  in  golden  san- 
dals, attended  by  his  retinue  of  followers, 
the  people  saluted  him  with  such  reverence 
as  is  akin  to  religious  awe;   such  honor,  let 


174  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

us  say,  as  was  paid  to  holy  men  in  mediaeval 
cities.  Often  I  thought  of  him,  and  won- 
dered how  it  could  have  been,  —  so  im- 
possible and  remote  seemed  the  picture  in 
that  denuded  plain;  and  I  remembered  the 
words  of  Lucretius,  whose  enthusiasm  for 
great  minds  is  one  of  his  engaging  qualities, 
in  which  he  laid  his  laurel  on  the  memory  of 
Empedocles,  whose  genius  was  kindred  to 
his  own :  — 

"Him  within  the  three-cornered  shores 
of  its  lands  that  island  bore,  about  which 
the  Ionian  sea  flows  in  large  cranklings,  and 
splashes  up  brine  from  its  green  waves. 
Here  the  sea  racing  in  its  straitened  firth, 
divides  by  its  waters  the  shores  of  Italia's 
lands  from  the  other's  coasts;  here  is  waste- 
ful Charybdis,  and  here  the  rumblings  of 
Etna.  .  .  .  Now,  though  this  great  country 
is  seen  to  deserve  in  many  ways  the  wonder 
of  mankind  and  is  held  to  be  well  worth 
visiting,  rich  in  all  good  things,  guarded  by 
large  force  of  men,  yet  seems  it  to  have 
held  within  it  nothing  more  glorious  than 
this  man." 

With    the    same     lonely    grandeur     that 


LUCRETIUS  175 

Empedocles  bore  to  Lucretius,  with  the  same 
solitary  preeminence,  Lucretius  stands  forth 
to  my  eyes  from  Roman  time,  which  "seems 
to  have  held  within  it  nothing  more  glorious 
than  this  man."  I  may  not  be  able  to  carry 
you  along  with  me  in  this  enthusiasm;  for  the 
subject  is  difficult,  the  matter  of  his  poem 
is  hard  and  dry,  unintelligible  indeed  to  a 
modern  reader  without  special  preparation 
to  understand  it ;  and  yet,  though  time  has 
thus  petrified  large  portions  of  it,  the  poem 
burns  with  a  far  deeper  vigor  than  flows  in 
the  poets  whose  fiery  genius  I  have  hitherto 
tried  to  interpret  to  you.  It  is  the  passion 
not  of  the  blood,  but  of  the  mind;  not  for  a 
nation's  glory  like  Camoens,  but  for  the  wel- 
fare of  man's  race;  not  issuing  in  despair 
like  Byron  and  Tasso,  but  in  the  control  of 
life.  It  is  the  intellectual  passion  to  serve 
mankind  in  the  ways  of  knowledge. 

Just  as  poetic  genius  is  often  a  double  star, 
—  as  Shakspere  was  both  poet  and  drama- 
tist, and  as  Plato  was  both  poet  and  philos- 
opher, and  the  poetic  element  was  primary 
in  both  of  them,  —  so  Lucretius  was  a  poet  and 
a  man  of  science,  and  the  poetic  element  was 


176  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

primary  in  him.  The  subject-matter  of  his 
work  is  science,  a  theory  of  physics,  explana- 
tions of  natural  phenomena,  astronomy,  — 
that  is,  the  science  of  the  ancient  world. 
For  the  most  part,  as  science,  it  is  in  matters 
of  detail  now  merely  curious  reading,  useful 
in  reminding  us  that  science  as  well  as  religion 
has  a  history  of  early  fables  and  a  past  lit- 
tered with  errors;  but  that  is  all.  Person- 
ally, I  find  something  refreshing  in  coming  in 
contact  with  this  childhood  of  science,  just 
as  one  finds  it  in  those  passages  of  Plato 
where  he  treats  incidentally  of  similiar  sub- 
jects; and  it  makes  for  intellectual  modesty, 
when  one  comes  upon  these  provinces  of 
ignorance  in  the  serious  works  of  the  great, 
for  even  in  our  own  culture  may  there  not  be 
just  such  childhood  tracts,  as  they  will  seem 
hereafter?  But  a  better  reason  why  the 
old  sages  of  Greece,  like  Empedocles,  in- 
terest me  is  that  there  I  feel  myself,  more 
clearly  than  elsewhere,  at  the  very  birth  of 
that  Greek  reason,  in  whose  advent  lay,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  —  I  do  not  say  eternal  sal- 
vation, —  but  the  salvation  of  our  race  here 
on  earth.     I  like  to  read  such  passages  of 


LUCRETIUS  177 

these  old  poems  as  express  man's  first  sense, 
not  of  the  difficulty  of  virtue,  but  of  the 
quite  as  important  difficulty  of  knowledge. 
It  sometimes  seems  to  us  that  the  early 
Greek  sages  were  overweening,  —  indeed  the 
very  types  of  omniscient  self-conceit;  but 
this  is  partly  because  of  the  universality  of 
their  theories,  and  partly  it  is  the  after-effect 
of  Socrates'  sarcasm  upon  our  minds.  Hear 
what  Empedocles  said,  four  centuries  before 
Lucretius :  — 

"Weak  and  narrow  are  the  powers  im- 
planted in  the  limbs  of  men ;  many  the  woes 
that  fall  on  them  and  blunt  the  edge  of 
thought;  short  is  the  measure  of  the  life  in 
death  through  which  they  toil;  then  are  they 
borne  away,  like  smoke  they  vanish  into  air, 
and  what  they  dream  they  know  is  but  the 
little  each  hath  stumbled  on,  in  wandering 
about  the  world.  Yet  boast  they  all  that 
they  have  learned  the  whole.  Vain  fools! 
for  what  that  is  no  eye  hath  seen,  no  ear  hath 
heard,  nor  can  it  be  conceived  by  mind  of 
man.  Thou,  then,  since  thou  hast  fallen  to 
this  place,  shalt  know  no  more  than  human 
wisdom  may  attain." 

N 


178  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

Lucretius,  however,  is  little  embarrassed 
by  any  doubts  of  the  amount  and  kind  of  his 
knowledge;  and  as  one  reads  his  explana- 
tion of  specific  natural  phenomena,  given  out 
with  such  assurance,  one  is  reminded  of  that 
tone  of  knowingness  still  familiar  to  us  in  the 
eager  and  plausible  scientist.  But  to  leave 
on  one  side  this  detail,  which  is  as  compact  of 
error  as  the  lives  of  the  saints,  there  are  cer- 
tain conceptions  and  ideas  of  a  more  general 
nature  which  will  give  us  a  more  favorable 
and  just  notion  of  Lucretius'  true  attain- 
ment in  a  scientific  grasp  of  the  world. 
These  ideas  are  simple  and  few;  but  to  esti- 
mate them  justly  it  must  be  remembered 
on  what  a  background  they  are  relieved, 
how  recent  was  any  natural  knowledge,  how 
close  was  the  world  of  the  primitive  mind, 
how  small  that  world  was,  how  near  the  gods 
were  in  it,  scarce  a  hand-breadth  off,  —  how 
Lucretius  himself  lived  in  a  Mediterranean 
world  seething  with  idolatries;  it  is  against 
the  barbarian  inheritance  of  paganism, 
against  its  Egyptian  mysticism,  its  magical 
practices,  its  long-consecrated  ceremonial 
rites,  —  in  a  word,  against  the  pagan  attitude 


LUCRETIUS  179 

to  nature  that  these  ideas  stand  forth ;  and  in 
them  slowly  forming  was  the  creation  of  a 
new  world,  the  world  of  thought  in  which 
we  now  live. 

In  the  first  place,  in  room  of  that  small 
Olympian  or  Nilotic  world  where  the  gods 
were  near,  he  conceived  of  infinite  space, 
thronged  with  systems  of  worlds,  universes 
like  our  own.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  think 
rightly  of  the  sequent  steps  of  man's  prog- 
ress, to  realize,  for  example,  the  epoch-mak- 
ing change  of  such  a  thing  as  the  discovery 
of  the  ways  to  work  metals,  or  of  cultiva- 
tion of  the  olive  and  of  corn,  or  of  the  alpha- 
bet. Now  we  think  of  the  epoch  of  the 
expansion  of  the  mind  as  being  coincident, 
say,  with  the  substitution  of  Copernican  for 
Ptolemaic  astronomy;  but  when  the  idea  of 
infinite  space  was  first  intelligently  conceived 
so  that  the  man  knew  what  he  was  thinking, 
that  was  the  moment  of  expansion  to  which 
all  others  are  dwindling  points;  that  was  a 
sublime  moment  in  the  history  of  man's 
mind,  though  since  such  knowledge  was  not 
so  readily  transmissible  as  a  material  dis- 
covery, like  the  culture  of  corn,  the  effects 


180  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

of  the  act  are  more  slowly  apparent.  The 
thought  of  infinity  was  old  when  Lucretius 
received  it;  but  it  must  not  be  considered 
that  the  infinity  of  the  universe  was  the  same 
to  him  as  to  us.  He  believed,  for  example, 
that  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars  actually 
are  of  the  size  that  they  appear  to  us  to  be; 
and  he  filled  space  with  systems  conceived 
on  that  pattern.  Nevertheless,  he  had  ac- 
quired for  his  thought  a  scale  of  infinity; 
and  it  gave  to  his  conception  of  things  a 
sublimity  not  unlike  that  which  the  same 
scale  gives  Milton  in  "  Paradise  Lost." 

Secondly,  he  conceived  of  nature  as  an 
energy  existing  in  this  infinite,  and  infinite 
itself;  and  in  the  analysis  of  energy  he  found 
the  other  pole  of  thought,  the  infinitesimal, 
the  atomic ;  for  all  matter  is  composed  of  the 
atoms,  infinite  in  number,  and  themselves 
imperceptible  to  the  senses.  In  other  words, 
he  conceived  of  nature,  on  modern  lines,  as 
an  unseen  energy,  —  the  unseen  universe,  as 
we  sometimes  call  it,  —  the  microscopic,  the 
molecular,  the  ethereal  wave  of  force,  how- 
ever constituted,  which  is  invisible,  but  out 
of  which  in  combination  the  visible  world 


LUCRETIUS  181 

of  nature  emerges  to  our  gross  senses.  The 
world  of  nature  was  thus  to  him,  essentially, 
a  world  of  the  mind's  eye;  the  veil  of  sense 
had  fallen,  and  he  saw  what  was  behind. 
This  theory  he  derived,  as  he  did  all  his 
knowledge,  from  the  Greeks,  those  few  lonely 
thinkers  who  were  the  light  of  that  early 
world.  The  idea  itself,  however,  was  a 
great  achievement  of  thought,  and  one  of  the 
most  fruitful  legacies  that  the  antique  world 
transmitted  to  us. 

Thirdly,  he  conceived  of  energy  as  or- 
ganized; the  atoms  were  different  in  kind, 
and  limited  in  the  number  of  kinds,  and  by 
their  combination  formed  various  species  of 
things,  as  we  may  call  them,  and  these  species 
were  fixed,  so  that  a  certain  combination 
produced  one  species  only,  and  if  that  species 
had  in  itself  the  power  of  reproduction,  it 
reproduced  only  its  own  species.  Every- 
thing thus,  he  said,  has  "its  limit  and  deep- 
set  boundary  mark."  This  clearly  is  na- 
ture organized.  Fourthly,  he  conceived  of 
energy  as  a  flux,  an  element  of  change,  an 
incessant  action  and  transformation  of  the 
atomic  groups  dissolving  and  recombining, 


182  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

which  is  the  process  of  nature.  Fifthly,  he 
conceived  of  energy  as  perfectly  conserved 
in  this  process ;  there  is  neither  loss  nor  addi- 
tion; the  sum  remains  always  constant. 
Sixthly,  he  conceived  of  energy  as  absolutely 
law-abiding,  subject  neither  to  interference 
nor  caprice  nor  default,  unchangeable  in  its 
certainty.  It  is,  perhaps,  by  the  strength 
with  which  he  grasped  this  idea  of  the  in- 
variable order  of  natural  law  that  he  most 
affects  the  admiration  of  modern  times, 
partly  because  of  the  intensity  of  feeling 
with  which  he  clings  to  it;  it  is  the  anchor 
of  his  faith.  To  sum  it  up,  Lucretius  con- 
ceived nature  as  an  unseen,  organizing, 
ceaselessly  active,  perfectly  conserved,  and 
law-abiding  energy,  working  in  infinite  space 
and  itself  infinite.  This  is  not  unlike  the 
scientific  idea  that  we  know. 

To  turn  to  the  history  of  the  universe,  it 
appeared  to  Lucretius  that  in  the  ceaseless 
action  of  infinite  atoms  in  infinite  space 
sooner  or  later  there  would  arise  the  partic- 
ular combination  from  which  the  world 
phenomena  known  to  man  followed.  He 
did  not  believe  that  the  world  was  very  old, 


LUCRETIUS  183 

and  he  thought  the  history  of  man  quite 
recent.  There  is  in  his  physical  theory  a 
rude  doctrine  of  evolution,  of  the  centring 
of  the  sun  and  moon  and  the  solidifying  of 
the  earth;  and  man  arising  out  of  nature, 
with  other  species  of  things,  was  half-beast, 
savage  and  rough  and  pitiable,  and  was  gradu- 
ally by  his  own  efforts  civilized.  He  notices 
the  extinction  of  species  in  the  conflict  for 
life,  and  he  assigns  to  the  softening  influence 
of  children  a  great  share  in  raising  man 
from  the  savage  and  brutal  state.  Some  of 
you  may  remember  that  John  Fiske  was 
believed  to  have  added  an  original  contri- 
bution to  the  doctrine  of  evolution  by  the 
influence  he  assigned  to  the  prolongation  of 
the  period  of  infancy.  It  is  a  curious  par- 
allel. But  it  is  enough  to  say  that  in  his 
theory  of  the  origin  of  civilization,  language, 
the  arts,  and  all  that  concerns  the  primitive 
history  of  mankind,  Lucretius  is  quite  in 
harmony  with  modern  thought,  even  to  the 
analysis  of  the  influence  of  dreams  in  gen- 
erating some  important  human  conceptions 
with  regard  to  the  soul.  As  he  thought  that 
the  life  of  mankind  and  of  our  universe  had 


184  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

not  been  long,  he  also  believed  that  the  world 
had  grown,  even  in  that  time,  old,  and  was 
losing  its  strength ;  his  mind  was  prepossessed 
with  the  idea  of  the  dissolution  of  things  as 
the  natural  term  of  all  combinations  of 
atoms,  and  it  is  a  curious  sign  of  the  sense 
of  insecurity  then  belonging  to  the  human 
mind  to  find  him  thinking  that  the  world  as 
we  know  it  would  end  in  a  catastrophe, 
which  he  apparently  anticipated  as  likely 
to  occur  at  any  moment,  when  the  frame  of 
things  should  fall  in  and  the  atomic  storm 
fly  dispersed  abroad.  Such  in  brief  is  the 
view  of  the  world  which  Lucretius  presents. 
It  is  not,  however,  the  science  of  Lucretius 
that  interests  me;  it  is  incidental  to  my 
main  purpose,  which  is  rather  to  set  forth  the 
poet.  Yet  it  was  science  which  gave  to 
Lucretius  the  ample  career  of  his  mind.  He 
was  excited  and  enfranchised  by  it,  and  in 
these  ideas  he  seemed  to  have  received,  as 
it  were,  the  freedom  of  the  universe,  to  go 
fearless  and  unquestioned  where  he  would, 
as  he  describes  his  master,  Epicurus,  who, 
he  says,  "traversed  throughout  in  mind  and 
spirit  the  immeasurable  universe,  whence  he 


LUCRETIUS  1S5 

returns  a  conqueror  to  tell  us  what  can,  what 
cannot  come  into  being,  —  on  what  principle 
each  thing  has  its  powers  defined,  its  deep- 
set  boundary  mark."  Lucretius  had  reached 
in  these  conceptions  the  seats  of  the  wise, 
which  he  describes  in  a  famous  passage :  — 
"It  is  sweet,  when  on  the  great  sea  the 
winds  trouble  its  waters,  to  behold  from 
land  another's  deep  distress;  not  that  it  is  a 
pleasure  and  delight  that  any  should  be 
afflicted,  but  because  it  is  sweet  to  see  from 
what  evils  you  are  yourself  exempt.  It  is 
sweet  also  to  look  upon  the  mighty  struggles 
of  war  arrayed  along  the  plains  without 
sharing  yourself  in  the  danger.  But  nothing 
is  more  welcome  than  to  hold  the  lofty  and 
serene  positions  well  fortified  by  the  learn- 
ing of  the  wise,  from  which  you  may  look 
down  upon  others  and  see  them  wandering  all 
abroad  and  going  astray  in  their  search  for 
the  path  of  life,  see  the  contest  among  them 
of  intellect,  the  rivalry  of  birth,  the  striving 
night  and  day  with  surpassing  effort  to 
struggle  up  to  the  summit  of  power  and  be 
masters  of  the  world.  O  miserable  minds  of 
men!     O  blinded  breasts!" 


186  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

It  is  from  such  a  height  that  Lucretius  is 
always  seen  looking  down.  For  he  had  about 
him  the  horizons  and  perspectives  of  a  new 
world.  In  another  famous  and  peculiarly 
Roman  passage  he  says:  "When  mighty 
legions  fill  the  plain  with  their  rapid  move- 
ment, raising  the  pageantry  of  warfare,  the 
splendor  rises  up  to  heaven,  and  all  the  land 
about  is  bright  with  the  glitter  of  brass,  and 
beneath  from  the  mighty  host  of  men  the 
sound  of  their  tramp  arises,  and  the  moun- 
tains, struck  by  their  shouting,  reecho  their 
voices  to  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  the  horse- 
men hurry  to  and  fro  on  either  flank  and 
suddenly  charge  across  the  plains,  shaking 
them  with  their  impetuous  onset.  .  .  .  And 
yet  there  is  some  place  in  the  lofty  mountains 
whence  they  appear  to  be  all  still,  and  to 
rest  as  a  bright  gleam  upon  the  plains." 

This  is  the  new  perspective  from  which 
Lucretius  looks  on  human  life.  He  was  the 
only  Roman  who  transcended  Rome.  He 
sees  Rome  itself  as  but  one  of  the  swift 
runners  who  hand  on  in  turn  the  torch  of  life 
among  the  nations.  He  was  a  Roman,  and 
of  an  ancient  house;   but  he  despised  alike 


LUCRETIUS  187 

imperial  power  and  vastness  of  wealth. 
Rome  spread  material  dominion  over  the 
earth,  but  he  saw  only  the  dominion  of  the 
mind  as  a  thing  worthy  of  man's  dignity. 
Rome  subjected  men  in  their  bodies,  but  his 
passion  was  to  enfranchise  the  souls  of  men 
and  bring  them  to  a  birth  of  freedom.  For 
Lucretius  was  deeply  endowed  with  that 
social  sympathy  which  belongs  to  poetry 
by  its  own  nature,  as  I  have  said;  and  the 
main  motive  of  his  poem  was  not  knowledge, 
not  the  scholar's  motive,  but  was  service, 
the  poet's  function.  It  was  not  for  science 
that  he  deeply  cared,  but  for  its  effects  on 
the  minds  of  men. 

He  looked  abroad  over  human  life,  and 
he  often  depicts  it  in  the  large;  he  sees  it 
without  a  veil  and  tells  it  without  a  lie;  there 
is  no  golden  age  in  man's  past  for  him,  — 
only  the  bestial  misery  and  blood-stained 
cruelty  of  savage  life  from  which  man  rises 
with  vast  effort  and  suffering;  or,  he  shows, 
as  at  the  end  of  the  poem,  the  plague  at 
Athens,  a  terrible  scene  of  human  wretched- 
ness; or,  he  singles  out  of  the  high  luxurious 
life  of  the  age  the  Roman  noble,  —  "  driving 


188  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

his  horses,  he  speeds  in  hot  haste  to  his  coun- 
try house,  as  if  his  house  were  on  fire 
and  he  was  hurrying  to  bring  assistance. 
Straightway  he  begins  to  yawn,  so  soon  as  he 
has  reached  his  threshold,  or  sinks  heavily  into 
sleep,  or  even  with  all  haste  returns  to  the 
city."  It  is  the  picture  of  speeding  wealth 
in  our  own  day.  Lucretius  renders  life  as  he 
sees  it,  in  its  past  and  present ;  and  his  words 
are  blended  of  irony,  reproof,  and  sorrow. 
He  had  broad  and  natural  sympathies;  and 
his  sympathy,  though  not  lacking  in  individ- 
ual touches,  is  nevertheless  mainly  imper- 
sonal and  racial;  it  is  for  the  race  rather 
than  the  man  that  he  has  pity  and  com- 
miseration. That  is  why  he  wrote  his  poem 
of  which  the  aim  is  not  scientific  but  phil- 
anthropic. He  saw  mankind  under  the 
yoke  of  superstition;  the  critics  say  that  he 
exaggerated  the  terrors  of  the  supernatural, 
which  did  not  so  afflict  men  in  paganism. 
I  am  not  competent  to  gainsay  their  opinion, 
yet  my  own  mind  refuses  to  see  the  Mediter- 
ranean world  of  those  ages  other  than  as  he 
described  it,  —  permeated  with  superstitious 
fear  and  barren  pagan  practices  through  all 


LUCRETIUS  189 

its  million-peopled  coasts ;  so,  at  any  rate,  it 
seemed  to  him,  and  he  lifted  his  hand  to 
wither  this  immeasurable  evil,  the  chief  and 
fruitful  source  of  men's  woes,  at  the  root. 
It  is  at  superstition,  as  at  the  old  dragon, 
that  every  glittering  shaft  of  reason  is  shot  in 
these  golden  lines. 

Lucretius  identified  all  religion  with  super- 
stition, and  meant  to  uproot  it  from  the  minds 
of  men  and  entirely  eradicate  it.  He  op- 
posed in  sharp  contrast  the  pagan  view  of 
the  world,  under  which  man  and  nature 
were  the  sport  of  the  gods,  and  the  view  of 
Greek  reason  in  which  the  divine  element  in 
every  form  was  excluded  both  from  nature 
and  human  life.  The  state  of  man  as  Lu- 
cretius saw  it,  under  paganism,  was  one  of 
servitude  to  fear;  under  this  idea  of  the 
Greek  reason  it  was  one  of  freedom,  of  dig- 
nity, and  at  its  worst  estate  one  of  noble 
fortitude  and  self-respect.  He  desired  to 
establish  this  reign  of  reason,  in  place  of 
paganism,  and  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of 
his  master,  Epicurus,  who  had  opened  the 
way  and  brought  this  light  into  the  world. 
At  the  outset  of  his  poem  he  describes  this 


190  THE  INSPIRATION   OF  POETRY 

achievement  of  Epicurus  and  what  it  meant 
for  mankind :  — 

"When  human  life  lay  foully  prostrate 
upon  earth,  crushed  down  under  the  weight 
of  religion,  who  showed  her  head  from  the 
quarters  of  heaven  with  hideous  aspect 
lowering  upon  mortals,  a  man  of  Greece 
ventured  first  to  lift  up  his  mortal  eyes  to 
her  face  and  first  to  withstand  her  to  her 
face.  Him  neither  story  of  gods  nor  thunder- 
bolts nor  heaven  with  threatening  roar  could 
quell;  they  only  chafed  the  more  the  eager 
courage  of  his  soul,  filling  him  with  desire  to 
be  the  first  to  burst  the  fast  bars  of  nature's 
portals.  Therefore  the  living  force  of  his 
soul  gained  the  day;  on  he  passed  far  be- 
yond the  flaming  walls  of  the  world  and 
traversed  throughout,  in  mind  and  spirit, 
the  immeasurable  universe.  ...  Us  his 
victory  brings  level  with  heaven." 

It  is  always  a  great  moment  when  man- 
kind looks  at  its  gods  with  level  eyes;  and, 
in  this  case,  the  gods  seemed  to  Lucretius  to 
vanish  and  remove  far  away.  He  believed 
that  these  gods  that  men  worshipped  with 
altars  and  sacred  rites  over  the  whole  earth, 


LUCRETIUS  191 

and  honored  with  festal  days,  were  the  coin- 
age of  man's  brain,  and  man  had  placed 
them  in  heaven  and  given  them  charge  of 
all  things:  — 

"0  hapless  race  of  men,  when  that  they 
charged  the  gods  with  such  acts,  and  coupled 
with  them  bitter  wrath!  what  groanings  did 
they  then  beget  for  themselves,  what  wounds 
for  us,  what  tears  for  our  children's  children! 
No  act  is  it  of  piety  to  be  often  seen  with  veiled 
head  to  turn  to  a  stone  and  approach  every 
altar  and  fall  prostrate  on  the  ground  and 
spread  out  the  palms  before  the  statues  of  the 
gods  and  sprinkle  the  altars  with  much  blood 
of  beasts  and  link  vow  on  vow,  but  rather 
to  be  able  to  look  on  all  things  with  a  mind 
at  peace." 

Nor,  says  Lucretius,  in  his  opening  lines, 
should  any  fear  that  the  ground  of  reason  is 
unholy  and  her  path  the  path  of  sin;  rather 
it  is  religion  that  is  sinful.  And  he  goes  on 
to  draw  that  picture  of  the  human  sacrifice 
of  Iphigeneia  by  Agamemnon,  her  father, 
when  the  Greek  ships  crossed  to  Troy,  as 
a  capital  instance  of  the  evil  to  which  religion 
inclines  the  hearts  of  men.     He  puts  this 


192  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

picture  in  the  forefront  of  his  poem  as  a 
landmark  of  its  thought;  it  was  from  such 
monstrous  acts,  and  the  mood  which  is  their 
parent,  that  life  could  be  freed;  in  other  words, 
the  capital  thought  of  the  poem  is  that  life 
must  purify  itself.  For  Lucretius  looked 
on  life  as  not  so  much  wretched  because  of 
external  calamity  visited  upon  man,  but 
because  of  those  woes  to  which  his  own  will 
consents  and  in  which  it  is  by  folly  or  fear  an 
accomplice;  religion  in  particular  was  some- 
thing of  which  man  could  rid  his  bosom,  since 
it  was  born  of  it.  To  this  end,  then,  Lucre- 
tius strove;  it  is  with  passion  that  he  pleads 
the  cause,  and  it  is  this  passion  which  under- 
lies the  intellectual  vigor  of  the  panorama  of 
nature  in  her  acts  and  scenes  which  he  unfolds, 
and  also  the  profound  moral  sympathy  with 
which  he  displays  the  human  lot  under  na- 
ture's dispensation.  It  is,  therefore,  not  ex- 
position but  persuasion  that  he  has  in  view, 
and  for  this  reason  he  inlays  the  verse  with 
pictures,  in  the  old  way,  —  Gray's  way, — 
and  puts  truth  forth  as  poetry. 

His  procedure  is  easily  understood.     ' '  This 
terror,  then,"   he   says,    "and  darkness   of 


LUCRETIUS  193 

mind  must  be  dispelled  not  by  the  rays  of  the 
sun  and  glittering  shafts  of  day,  but  by  the 
aspect  and  the  law  of  nature."  He  excludes 
the  gods  from  dominion  over  nature  on  the 
ground  that  the  universe  is  infinite  and  com- 
mand of  it  is  beyond  their  power.  Man's 
conception  of  the  world  had  outgrown  his 
conception  of  the  gods.  "Who  can  order 
the  infinite  mass?  who  can  hold  with  a  guid- 
ing hand  the  mighty  reins  of  immensity?" 
Lucretius  says.  And  again  he  excludes  intelli- 
gence from  nature  on  the  ground  of  the  im- 
perfection of  the  world ;  it  is  obviously  not  the 
work  of  intelligence.  Intelligence  belongs  to 
man  alone;  it  is  the  accident  of  his  being, 
and  will  vanish  from  the  universe  with  him. 
We  are  not  concerned  with  the  truth  of  the 
statement,  but  with  the  fact.  What  a  step  it 
was,  what  a  power  it  showed  in  man  to  change 
his  mind!  What  a  masterly  reversal  of  the 
point  of  view  this  is,  in  comparison  with  that 
universal  habit  of  old  time  which  projected 
human  life  into  all  things  and  gave  the 
early  peoples  over  to  animism,  polytheism, 
and  all  the  subtler  forms  of  anthropomorphic 
thought  as  it  fades  away  in  philosophy  and 


194  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

metaphysics.  It  is  by  just  such  reversals  of 
universal  past  beliefs  that  the  progress  of 
reason  is  marked. 

i  All  this  argument  against  the  gods  proceeds, 
you  observe,  not  on  moral  but  on  intellectual 
grounds;  that  is,  it  is  a  characteristically 
Greek  mode  of  thought.  The  citadel  of 
superstition,  however,  in  Lucretius'  eyes  was 
rather  in  the  fear  of  something  after  death 
than  in  the  presence  of  the  gods  in  this  life  and 
the  world  of  nature.  He  met  this  fear  by  the 
simplest  mode  of  attack,  and  denied  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  go  into  his  argument.  To  me  the  most 
remarkable  thing  about  it  is  not  the  argument 
nor  the  belief  itself,  but  the  grave  and  almost 
tender  considerateness  with  which  Lucretius 
tries  to  reconcile  men  to  this  belief,  —  it  is  al- 
most as  if  he  were  talking  to  children,  with 
a  gentle  but  firm  insistence,  and  with  entire 
understanding  of  their  disturbed  fears  and 
sympathy  with  them,  but,  nevertheless,  if  they 
will  listen,  the  fact  is  not  only  really  so, 
but  best,  a  blessing,  the  greatest  blessing  that 
can  come  to  heal  the  wounds  of  men  and  give 
them  peace.     This  lulling  tone  in  the  argu- 


LUCRETIUS  195 

ment  always  reminds  me  of  the  persuasive 
melody  of  the  verses  in  the  "Faery  Queen," 
where  Despair  wooes  the  knight  to  self- 
destruction.  In  no  part  of  the  poem  is 
Lucretius  more  vividly  in  sympathy  with  life 
in  its  natural  happiness.  "Soon,"  he  says, 
"shall  thy  home  receive  thee  no  more  with 
glad  welcome,  nor  thy  true  wife,  nor  thy  dear 
children  run  to  snatch  the  first  kiss,  touching 
thy  heart  with  silent  gladness."  Nowhere  ishe 
more  gravely  eloquent:  "Death,  therefore,  to 
us  is  nothing ;  .  .  .  and  as  in  time  gone  by  we 
felt  no  distress  when  the  Carthaginians  from  all 
sides  came  together  to  do  battle,  and  all  things 
shaken  by  war's  troublous  uproar  shuddered 
and  quaked  beneath  high  heaven,  and  mortal 
men  were  in  doubt  which  of  the  two  peoples  it 
should  be  to  whose  empire  all  must  fall  by  sea 
and  land  .  .  .  thus  when  we  shall  be  no  more 
.  .  .  nothing  whatever  can  happen  to  excite 
sensation,  not  if  earth  shall  be  mingled  with 
sea,  and  sea  with  heaven."  Nowhere  does 
he  speak  with  more  dignity,  like  a  Roman : 
"Why  not,  then,  take  thy  departure  like  a 
a  guest  filled  with  life,  —  and  with  resigna- 
tion, thou  fool,  enter  upon  untroubled  rest?" 


196  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

"Now  resign  all  things  unsuited  to  thy  age, 
and  with  a  good  grace  up  and  greatly  go: 
thou  must."  "Even  worthy  Ancus  has  quit- 
ted the  light,  .  .  .  the  son  of  the  Scipios, 
thunderbolt  of  war,  terror  of  Carthage, 
yielded  his  bones  to  earth  just  as  if  he  were 
the  lowest  menial.  .  .  .  Even  Epicurus  passed 
away  when  his  light  of  life  had  run  its  course, 
he  who  surpassed  in  intellect  the  race  of  man. 
.  .  .  Wilt  thou  then  hesitate,  and  think 
it  a  hardship  to  die?  .  .  .  None  the  less 
will  that  everlasting  death  await  you.  .  .  . 
Thus  it  is  that  all  no  less  than  thou  have 
before  this  come  to  an  end,  and  hereafter 
will  come  to  an  end; .  .  .  and  life  is  granted 
to  none  in  fee-simple,  but  to  all  in  usu- 
fruct." 

Such  are  some  of  the  passages  in  which 
Lucretius,  like  a  patient  but  high-minded 
teacher,  endeavors  to  reconcile  the  minds  of 
men  to  their  good.  For  in  his  eyes  to  es- 
cape from  the  evil,  whose  bondage  is  a  state 
of  supernatural  fear,  is  to  find  the  door  of 
life  itself,  —  the  door  of  that  life  still  possible 
to  men  which,  he  says,  though  on  earth,  may 
be  a  life  "not  unworthy  of  the  gods." 


LUCRETIUS  197 

For  when  Lucretius  had  excluded  divine 
power  from  the  constitution  and  government 
of  nature,  —  and  he  goes  on  to  show  that  all 
events  are  merely  natural  phenomena,  — 
and  when  he  had  quieted  the  fear  of  some- 
thing after  death  by  denying  immortality  to 
the  soul,  he  had,  nevertheless,  performed 
only  the  negative  part  of  his  task.  He  had, 
besides,  to  build  up  an  ideal  of  wise  life  under 
such  conditions.  The  view  that  great  poets 
take  of  human  life  is  never  very  rose-colored ; 
and  Lucretius  is  no  exception  to  the  rule. 
The  picture  that  he  gives  of  the  child  at  birth 
is  very  famous:  "The  babe,  like  a  sailor 
cast  ashore  by  the  cruel  waves,  lies  naked 
on  the  ground,  speechless,  in  need  of  every 
aid  to  life,  when  first  nature  has  cast  him 
forth  by  great  throes  from  his  mother's  womb ; 
and  he  fills  the  air  with  his  piteous  wail,  as 
befits  one  whose  doom  it  is  to  pass  through  so 
much  misery  in  life."  Human  nature  itself 
is  very  imperfect ;  it  is,  says  Lucretius,  like  a 
leaky  vessel  that  will  not  retain  even  the 
blessings  that  are  poured  into  it,  and  moreover 
it  vitiates  these  goods  inwardly  by  a  certain 
taint  and  nauseous  flavor,  as  it  were,  pro- 


198  THE  INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

ceeding  from  itself.  The  discovery  of  wisdom 
that  could  in  any  way  remedy  these  objects 
seems  to  Lucretius  a  marvellous  action:  "a, 
god  he  was,"  he  says,  "a  god  who  first 
found  out  that  plan  of  life  which  is  now 
termed  wisdom."  It  was  a  more  divine 
gift  than  corn  or  wine,  for  life  could  go  on 
without  these;  but  "a  happy  life  was  not 
possible  without  a  clean  breast."  The  deeds 
of  Hercules  were  nothing  in  comparison. 
"  The  earth  even  now  abounds  in  wild  beasts 
and  is  filled  with  troublous  terror  throughout 
woods  and  great  mountains  and  deep  forests; 
places  which  we  have  it  for  the  most  part  in 
our  power  to  shun.  But  unless  the  breast  is 
cleared,  what  battles  and  dangers  must  then 
find  their  way  into  us  in  our  own  despite!" 
What  cares,  what  fears!  —  and  pride,  lust, 
and  wantonness,  what  disasters  they  occasion! 
and  luxury  and  sloth!  "  He  therefore  who 
shall  have  subdued  all  these  and  banished 
them  from  the  mind  by  words,  not  arms, 
shall  he  not  have  a  just  title  to  be  ranked 
among  the  gods?"  It  is  a  Roman  who  is 
thus  exalting  the  victories  of  peace  over 
those  of  war,  and  of  reason  over  arms.     He 


LUCRETIUS  199 

builds  then  his  ideal  of  a  life,  content  with 
little,  free  from  lust  for  political  power  or 
riches  or  pleasures,  strong  in  natural  affections 
and  in  the  reasonable  satisfaction  of  our 
needs,  and  with  power,  if  not  to  escape  calam- 
ity, at  least  by  fortitude  to  blunt  the  edge 
of  evil.  To  learn  this  wisdom  is  the  best  use 
of  life  in  the  brief  interval  that  life  shall  be 
ours. 

Such,  in  rough  outlines,  is  the  teaching  of 
Lucretius.  He  does  not  deny  the  existence  of 
the  divine  gods;  but  they  live  remote  from 
man,  like  him  a  part  of  nature  in  their  own 
mode  of  existence,  and  to  be  careless  of  man- 
kind is  a  part  of  their  blessedness.  It  would 
be  easy  to  appear  to  find  in  that  principle  of 
energy,  that  vigor  which  is  nature,  whose 
force  is  in  the  coming  of  spring  and  the  glad- 
ness of  cattle  and  in  the  thoughts  of  men, 
which  is  the  inspiration  of  this  poem  in 
Lucretius  also,  as  he  says,  —  it  would  be  easy 
to  find  in  this  something  like  a  divine  prin- 
ciple diffusing  itself  in  life;  but  it  is  not  so 
presented  by  Lucretius.  He  excluded  from 
life  every  thought  of  what  is  to  our  minds 
religion  and  the  immortal  soul ;  and  did  it  as  a 


200  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

bringer  of  intellectual  truth  in  the  interest 
of  man's  earthly  happiness.  It  is,  perhaps, 
hard  for  us  to  realize  that  he  seemed  to  him- 
self in  all  this  a  benefactor  of  his  race.  Yet, 
if  we  remember  justly  the  pagan  world, 
or  even  if  we  recall  the  vast  reign  of  religious 
superstition  over  mankind  still  throughout 
the  world  and  realize  what  it  is,  if  we  remem- 
ber how  much  of  superstition  still  persists 
even  in  the  purer  forms  of  religion,  and  to 
how  great  evils  religion  has  inclined  men's 
minds  in  the  centuries  since  Lucretius  wrote, 
— if  we  keep  something  of  all  this  in  our  minds, 
we  may  better  measure  the  hopes  of  this  early 
thinker  who  first  seized  hold  of  the  truths 
of  science  and  the  dominion  of  the  pure  rea- 
son over  men's  minds  as  if  there  were  in  it  the 
coming  of  a  new  and  happier  age. 

Lucretius  was  not  so  much  prescient  of  that 
new  age  as  living  in  it.  The  sense  of  being 
a  discoverer  in  a  new  land  is  one  of  the  most 
vivid  traits  in  his  mind.  "I  traverse," 
he  says,  "the  pathless  haunts  never  yet 
trodden  by  the  foot  of  man.  I  love  to  ap- 
proach the  untasted  springs  and  to  quaff,  I 
love  to  cull  fresh  flowers  and  gather  for  my 


LUCRETIUS  201 

head  a  crown  from  spots  whence  the  Muses 
have  yet  veiled  the  brows  of  none, — because 
I  teach  of  great  things  —  things  unattempted 
yet  in  prose  or  rhyme."  He  has  this  mark 
of  the  poetic  faculty  —  its  forward-looking 
gaze,  its  atmosphere  of  the  virgin  peak  and 
the  new-breaking  morning.  He  has  also  the 
mark  of  passion,  —  intense,  overwhelming, 
absorbing,  —  the  passion  of  the  intellect 
for  truth  and  of  the  heart  for  service  to  his 
race.  He  has  the  mark  of  the  social  bond, 
which  belongs  to  genius.  He  stands,  more- 
over, at  that  line  of  fracture  in  the  thoughts  of 
men  which  does  not  belong  to  any  one  age, 
like  the  Renaissance,  but  is  the  slowest  of  the 
great  social  changes,  —  the  line  which  marks 
the  rise  of  reason  in  the  government  of  man's 
thoughts.  It  is  only  in  our  own  time  that 
Lucretius  has  been  esteemed  according  to  the 
true  measure  of  his  greatness.  But  what  a 
far-sighted  and  firm-fixed  genius  that  was 
which  could  wait  eighteen  centuries  for  its 
true  fame,  —  it  seems  like  one  of  those  great 
suns  of  outer  space  whose  light  requires  such 
length  of  years  to  reach  the  eyes  of  men. 
There  is  this  loneliness  of  intellectual  splen- 


202  THE  INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

dor,  in  Lucretius, — this  quality  of  solitariness 
in  his  genius,  which  I  began  by  speaking  of. 
I  know  that  Virgil  was  a  greater  poet,  and 
revere  him  above  all  other  poets,  but  in 
thinking  of  Lucretius  only  the  old  words  rise 
to  my  lips  —  "This  was  the  noblest  Roman 
of  them  all." 


VIII 

INSPIRATION 

You  will,  perhaps,  remember  that  in  open- 
ing this  course  a  few  general  principles  were 
suggested  with  regard  to  the  nature  of  poetic 
power,  and  from  time  to  time  I  have  directed 
your  attention  to  the  presence  of  some  of 
these  principles  in  the  six  poets  whose  genius 
we  have  examined.  Poetic  energy  was  de- 
fined as,  in  essence,  shared  and  controlled 
emotion;  in  its  being  shared  emotion  lies  its 
social  principle;  in  its  being  controlled  emo- 
tion lies  its  artistic  principle.  I  have  dwelt 
less,  however,  on  these  two  subsidiary  as- 
pects, and  have  sought  rather  to  bring  out 
clearly  the  primary  fact  that  emotion  is  the 
base  of  poetry,  and  that  capacity  for  it  is  the 
radical  power  of  genius,  and  that  the  poetic 
life  so  led  is  naturally  one  of  unrest  and  mis- 
fortune.    In  Marlowe  the  emotion  was  an 

203 


204  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

aspiration  of  all  the  faculties,  the  individual 
making  out  toward  the  infinite  in  all  ways ;  in 
Camoens  it  was  emotion  closely  joined  with 
action  in  a  national  epic;  in  Tasso  it  was 
emotion  disjoined  from  action  and  tending 
to  the  condition  of  music;  in  Byron  it  was 
emotion  of  the  heart ;  in  Lucretius  it  was  emo- 
tion of  the  intellect.  It  was  noticed,  too,  in 
accordance  with  the  general  principle  that 
great  literatures  arise  along  the  lines  of  frac- 
ture in  human  progress,  that  Marlowe  was 
the  child  of  the  Renaissance  in  England, 
that  Camoens  was  the  poet  of  world-discovery, 
that  Byron  was  the  star  of  the  revolutionary 
spirit  on  the  Continent,  and  Tasso  foretold  the 
age  of  music,  and  Lucretius  stood  in  the  dawn 
of  scientific  reason;  each  occupied  a  point 
of  vantage,  and  was,  as  it  were,  a  mountain 
crag  that  caught  and  flashed  on  a  moment  of 
morning  light.  Each  represented  some  mood 
of  the  world  at  a  culminating  point,  and  with 
intensity. 

The  prevailing  trait  of  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment in  action  —  its  free  and  lawless  nature 
—  has  also  been  exemplified.  These  poets 
have  left  upon  our  minds,  I  am  persuaded,  a 


INSPIRATION  205 

sense  of  their  extraordinary  vital  power,  of 
their  strange  difference  from  men  in  general, 
and  of  something  that  awes  us  in  their  genius 
as  if  a  miraculous  element  entered  into  it. 
The  sense  of  the  mystery  of  spiritual  power 
is  felt  in  connection  with  these  men.  It  is 
under  the  influence  of  such  thoughts  as  these 
that  men  speak  of  poetic  energy  as  an  inspira- 
tion; they  convey  thus  their  sense  that  the 
faculty  is  something  " above  man,"  that  it 
partakes  of  the  mystery  of  all  power  in  the 
universe,  that  it  is  kindred  with  what  they 
call  the  divine.  Something,  —  they  know 
not  what,  —  but  something  greater  than  the 
man  speaks  through  the  man,  and  there  is  a 
virtue  in  his  works  that  his  own  unaided  power 
never  placed  there.  I  think  I  describe  the 
feeling  fairly  in  these  words.  Inspiration  is  a 
natural  conviction  of  men  with  respect  to 
poetry;  and  to  the  greater  poets  themselves 
it  is  as  natural,  for  their  own  works  and  their 
states  of  mind  in  composing  seem  beyond  and 
above  themselves.  This  sense  of  possession, 
of  being  caught  up  into  a  sphere  of  greater 
power,  is  the  true  poetic  madness,  which  is  so 
familiar  an  idea  in  Greek  thought,  and  is  not 


206  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

yet  extinct.  I  have  thought  it  appropriate 
to  close  this  various  survey  of  the  poets  with 
some  final  remarks  on  this  old  mystery, 
so  ineradicable;  not  with  any  idea  of  solving 
it  at  all,  but  merely  to  offer  some  few  consider- 
ations with  regard  to  it,  which  have  occurred 
to  me  from  time  to  time.  Let  us  return, 
therefore,  to  that  gulf  which  we  found  in  the 
first  lecture  between  the  primitive  dancing 
and  singing  horde  and  the  divine  poet,  and 
look  more  closely  at  the  phenomena. 

It  has  been  said  that  "the  mental  condition 
of  the  lower  races  is  the  key  to  poetry";  and 
you  may  recall  that  I  defined  the  poet  as 
"  under  excitement  presenting  the  phenome- 
non of  a  highly  developed  mind  working  in  a 
primitive  way."  Primitive  psychology  is  a 
subject  beyond  my  ken;  but  there  are  a  few 
obvious  facts  that  a  modern  reader  can  hardly 
escape.  You  will  remember  that  in  the  dance 
of  the  primitive  horde  the  rhythm  is  very 
simple,  and  the  cry  is  perhaps  one  sound, 
interminably  repeated.  Monotony  is,  in  fact, 
characteristic  of  primitive  life.  The  repeti- 
tion has  certain  uses  easily  seen.  In  all 
thought  of  primitive  conditions  it  is  hardly 


INSPIRATION  207 

possible  for  us  to  exaggerate  the  feebleness  of 
the  human  mind  in  its  emergence  from  brute 
conditions.  The  first  use  of  monotonous 
repetition  is  to  fasten  attention,  a  difficult 
thing  for  the  savage  mind;  power  of  memory, 
the  power  of  brain-cells  to  retain  the  mental 
image  of  a  thing  or  an  event,  must  have  been 
greatly  indebted  to  such  a  monotonous  habit. 
Again,  the  repetition  assists  in  labor:  songs 
of  labor  are  not  a  relaxation  but  an  aid; 
the  Egyptian  workmen  sing  when  they  are 
tired;  again,  the  well-known  law  that  every 
mental  idea  of  an  action  tends  to  realize 
itself  in  that  action  is  sufficient  to  account 
for  one  definite  utility  there  is  in  the  repeated 
utterance  of  such  a  word  as  " strike,"  say, 
in  rhythm  before  each  blow.  On  the  passive 
side,  also,  it  will  be  readily  understood  that 
monotone  has  an  hypnotic  and  preparatory 
influence  on  the  mind.  Indeed  the  monotone 
may  be  the  basis,  the  exciting  cause,  or  ner- 
vous predisposition  of  the  wild  passion  which 
breaks  forth  and  possesses  the  participants 
in  the  dance.  Any  of  you  who  have  ever 
witnessed  such  performances  must  have 
been  struck  by  the  singular  coexistence  in 


208  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

them  of  monotone  and  of  excitement;  the 
two  are  linked  together,  —  wild  excitement 
such  as  we  never  dream  of,  together  with 
monotony  so  insistent  and  prolonged  as  to 
seem  incredible.  I  have  never  heard  Tenny- 
son read,  but  I  have  heard  his  reading 
precisely  imitated,  and  I  was  struck  in  it  by 
the  same  combination,  —  namely,  that  as 
the  passion  grew,  the  chanted  monotony  of 
the  lines  stood  out  more  rigidly.  It  has  been 
noticed,  too,  that  poets  naturally  thus  chant 
their  lines.  Wordsworth  did  so,  and  I  have 
heard  his  reading  also  imitated  with  precision. 
These  two  elements,  monotony  and  excite- 
ment, are  faithfully  reflected  in  the  Moham- 
medan religion,  which  is  near  to  primitive 
habits  in  all  ways.  Thus  in  the  several  sects 
of  North  Africa  one  is  distinguished  from 
another  in  various  ways,  and  among  others 
by  the  formula  or  verse  which  is  repeated 
by  each  member  a  certain  number  of  times 
daily.  Thus  the  brotherhood  of  Abd-er- 
Rahman  must  recite  their  formula,  seven 
words,  three  thousand  times  a  day ;  the  Tsid- 
jani  must  pray  at  morning  the  two  words 
"God  pardon"  two  hundred  times,  followed 


INSPIRATION  209 

by  a  longer  prayer  one  hundred  times  re- 
peated, and  then  one  hundred  times  the 
formula  of  seven  words.  At  three  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon  are  other  similar  prayers, 
and  at  sunset  the  same  as  at  morning.  In 
Moslem  mosques  I  have  myself  sometimes 
taken  the  beads  from  the  priest  and  re- 
peated the  formulas  as  I  wandered  about, 
to  see  what  it  was  like  to  live  that  way. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  the  dervish  dances  the 
element  of  excitement  in  combination  with 
monotony  is  easily  observed.  It  appears, 
therefore,  that  while  for  us  monotony  de- 
stroys interest  and  puts  us  to  sleep,  under 
other  conditions  it  is  the  ground  of  the  highest 
excitement. 

I  have  a  theory  —  whether  I  have  read  it 
or  dreamed  it  I  do  not  know  —  that  the  emer- 
gence of  man  from  the  brute-stage  of  life 
was  accompanied  by  an  immense  outburst  and 
increase  of  emotional  power.  If  it  were  so, 
the  emotion  was  of  this  kind;  and,  without 
regard  to  the  scientific  ground  of  the  theory, 
it  appears  to  me  prima  facie  plausible  to  this 
degree,  that  such  emotion  was  a  main  condi- 
tion of  the  gradual  advent  of  intellectual  life. 


210  THE   INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

If  we  remember  how  weak  and  unstable  then 
were  all  mental  phenomena,  still  perhaps  more 
like  waking  dreams  than  what  we  know  as 
continuous  and  organized  mental  life,  and  if 
we  remember  also  the  power  of  emotion 
to  vivify  the  mental  processes,  it  is  plain  that 
minds  so  stirred  would  grow  and  would  store 
power  beyond  other  minds.  The  phenome- 
non would  be  only  what  is  our  well-known 
experience  taking  place  in  a  lower  plane  of 
being.  Excitement  increases  the  speed  and 
power  of  the  mind;  the  use  of  stimulants 
affords  such  excitement,  and  when  the  excite- 
ment arises  naturally  through  the  emotions, 
the  effect  is  the  same.  The  state  so  induced, 
whether  naturally  or  artifically,  does  not  differ 
in  kind  from  that  of  inspiration,  —  that  is,  a 
power  above  the  normal  from  which  the 
subject  of  it  recedes  when  the  mood  is  gone. 
Emotion,  however  induced,  discharges  itself 
according  to  the  constitution  of  the  man 
who  feels  it;  and  in  primitive  life  it  would 
discharge  itself  in  this  one  or  that  one  wildly, 
wastefully,  spasmodically,  perhaps,  and  in 
brains  of  a  finer  or  stronger  quality  in  an- 
other way,  that  is,  along  directions  of  thought. 


INSPIRATION  211 

The  most  active  brains  would  be  those  most 
capable  of  emotion. 

If  emotion  played  such  a  part  in  generating 
intelligence,  it  becomes  easier  to  understand 
the  respect  paid  in  all  primitive  times  to  those 
who  are  described  as  madmen,  and  to  all  who 
were  subject  to  exalted  psychical  states  from 
whatever  cause;  and  the  impulse  which  led 
men  to  cultivate,  as  it  were,  the  trance 
state  by  artificial  or  semi-artificial  means, 
which  is  found  in  all  religions,  would  seem 
more  normal.  Certain  it  is  that  about  the 
ancient  oracles  there  gathered  intellectual  and 
moral  power,  and  even  as  at  Delphi  great 
guiding  power;  they  were  very  old  places  of 
immemorial  inspiration,  in  all  its  defined 
religious  forms,  its  trances,  and  ecstasies  as 
well  as  other  kinds  of  soothsaying;  they  were, 
in  a  certain  sense,  the  seats  of  truth  most 
revered.  For  the  oracles  were  not  places  of 
fraud;  fraud  entered  into  and  combined  with 
original  beliefs  and  practices,  as  it  has  in 
other  religions  without  number,  but  only 
in  their  decay.  Originally  the  oracles  were 
sincere  facts  of  religion  as  it  then  was. 
There  were  other  concurring  causes  for  their 


212  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

religious  primacy;  but  it  seems  not  unlikely 
that  the  power  of  emotional  excitement 
to  unlock  and  speed  intelligence  may  have 
been  one  element  of  real  utility  in  the 
phenomenon.  Facts  of  disease,  of  the  action 
of  vapors,  of  psychical  states  and  susceptibili- 
ties that  are  still  obscure,  were  no  doubt  in- 
volved in  the  entire  primitive  attitude  to  the 
divine  madness;  but  in  the  midst  of  all  there 
remains  one  thread  of  sense  and  reality  in 
the  normal  power  of  excitement  to  set  the 
intellectual  powers  in  uncommon  action. 

It  is  also  to  be  observed  that  monotony 
characterizes  the  primitive  mind  in  another 
way  than  has  been  noticed;  no  community 
is  so  bound  in  convention,  tradition,  and 
routine  as  the  savage  horde;  just  as  in  the 
lower  organizations  of  life,  the  ways  of  doing 
once  found  are  fossilized  in  invariable  paths 
of  instinct,  as  in  the  bees  and  ants,  so  in 
the  primitive  horde  ways  of  behavior  once 
established  became  conventionalized  with  a 
rigor  that  tyranny  could  never  equal.  The 
great  difficulty  to-day  with  the  primitive 
African  people  is  to  persuade  them  to  do 
other  or  different  from  their  fathers.     In  the 


INSPIRATION  213 

primitive  horde  every  one  conformed,  and 
especially  after  supersitious  religion  began  to 
prevail;  that  is,  every  one  conformed  ex- 
cept the  madman,  —  and  there  could  be  but 
one  explanation  of  such  a  man,  he  was  a 
sacred  person,  in  some  way  touched  with  that 
power,  which,  whether  it  was  daemonic  or  di- 
vine, was  pretty  much  one  to  the  savage  mind. 
Thus  primitive  man  regarded  these  various 
phenomena,  ranging  from  the  ordinary  type  of 
insanity  up  to  the  priestess  of  the  temple, 
as  belonging  in  the  region  of  inspiration,  of 
that  power  above  man  which  made  of  them 
persons  apart;  and  this  mood  toward  them 
persisted  through  ages  and  far  into  high  civili- 
zations. The  easy  old-fashioned  way  was  to 
look  on  all  this  primitive  and  pagan  belief  as 
merely  a  structure  of  superstition  and  fraud ; 
but  this  is  no  longer  possible.  And  it 
seems  to  me,  speaking  speculatively  and  not 
dogmatically,  that  in  this  universal  belief 
and  long  adherence  to  it  we  may  perhaps  dis- 
cern some  historic  traces  of  the  great  function 
of  emotion,  as  an  evolutionary  element,  in 
disengaging  and  freeing  and  establishing  the 
intellectual  powers  of  the  race. 


214  THE   INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  phenomena  as  they 
appear  in  the  field  of  civilization.  There  we 
see,  as  in  Greece,  men  under  excitement 
producing  poems,  dramas,  and  other  works 
at  moments  of  exaltation;  and  their  state 
was  described  by  observers  and  by  themselves 
as  one  of  poetic  madness.  It  was  a  theory 
universally  received.  What  is  it  that  had 
happened  ?  It  seems  to  be  no  more  than  in 
other  cases  of  excitement,  except  for  a  pecu- 
liarity in  the  manner  of  the  discharge  of  the 
emotion.  Let  me  recur  to  the  distinction 
which  was  alluded  to  in  the  first  lecture  be- 
tween the  power  of  Dionysus  and  the  power 
of  Apollo,  made  by  the  brilliant  and  unfortu- 
nate German  writer,  Frederic  Nietzsche,  in 
an  essay  of  his  youth  upon  Greek  tragedy  at 
a  time  when  he  was  dominated  by  enthusiasm 
for  Wagner's  music.  He  divided  poetry  be- 
tween the  two:  to  Apollo  he  ascribed  the 
intellectual  part,  the  dream,  the  perceptive 
faculty,  the  idea  as  it  is  known  to  conscious- 
ness, the  phenomenal;  to  Dionysus  he  gave 
the  intoxication,  the  self-destruction  or  re- 
nunciation of  consciousness,  the  revel  of 
emotion,   the  unfathomed   energy  of   exist- 


INSPIRATION  215 

ence;  or,  in  brief,  the  form-giving  element 
in  poetry  he  described  as  Apollinian,  the 
energy  he  described  as  Dionysiac.  He 
worked  the  theory  out  in  his  own  way.  But 
it  is  interesting  to  find  the  youngest  of  our 
new  philosophers  adopting  and  interpreting 
in  modern  terms  the  oldest  doctrine  of  poetry, 
—  namely,  that  it  is  a  madness;  and  the 
distinction  he  draws  serves  to  clarify  our 
thoughts.  Dionysus  is  the  god  who  presides 
over  the  emotion  as  mere  energy,  as  an  in- 
toxication, a  physical  and  mental  disturb- 
ance, an  orgy  of  the  muscles  and  the  nerves, 
a  dsemoniac  possession.  Apollo  is  the  god 
who  presides  over  inspiration  rather  in  its 
intellectual  issue  as  a  power  generating  fair 
forms  and  clear-shining  truths,  of  which 
poetry  is  the  embodiment.  If  you  will  re- 
call what  I  have  just  said,  that  in  the  mass 
of  the  phenomena  there  are  all  sorts  of 
wasteful  emotion,  but  amid  them  there  is 
one  thread  of  sense  and  reality,  —  there 
where  the  waste  is,  is  Dionysus  raving;  there 
where  the  single  thread  is,  is  Apollo's  shining 

hand. 

There  is  one  idea  that  played  a  great  part 


216  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

in  Greek  thought,  —  the  idea  of  harmony. 
Apollo  is  the  god  of  harmony.  Now  the 
Greeks  believed  that  there  is  a  principle  of 
harmony  in  the  world  which  takes  body  of 
itself.  It  is  independent  of  man,  but  it  may 
take  body  through  his  mind.  Thus  the 
great  temple,  the  Parthenon,  was  a  harmony 
brought  into  being  by  man,  yet  he  did  not 
make  the  harmony.  This  is  the  view  so 
familiar  to  us  in  Emerson's  poem :  — 

"These  temples  grew  as  grows  the  grass; 
Art  might  obey,  but  not  surpass : 
The  passive  master  lent  his  hand 
To  the  vast  soul  that  o'er  him  planned." 

That  is,  there  is  a  principle  of  harmony  in  the 
world  independent  of  art,  but  through  art  it 
takes  form  and  becomes  apparent  to  the 
eyes  or  ears  or  imagination  of  man.  Apollo 
is  the  god  who  so  guides  the  original  energy 
of  emotion  that  out  of  it  issues  this  fair 
harmony  known  through  the  senses  and  their 
imagery  to  the  perceptive  powers,  that  is,  to 
the  mind  of  men.  This  is  what,  in  the  first 
lecture,  was  called  the  dream  that  attends 
emotion,  the  sensuous  and  intellectual  part; 
but  it  was  also  there  said  that  the  dream  is 


INSPIRATION  217 

not  something  added  to  emotion,  but  is  the 
product  of  the  emotion  itself.  The  Dionysiac 
orgy  ends  in  the  physical  state,  and  when  the 
body  is  exhausted  the  emotion  is  spent  and 
gone;  the  inspiration  of  Apollo  ends  in  an 
intellectual  harmony  of  poetry  or  music  or 
other  art,  and  this  work  abides  after  the  emo- 
tion is  spent,  —  is  indeed  the  enduring  and 
eternal  form  of  that  fleeting  emotional  over- 
flow in  the  soul  and  body  of  the  poet  and 
artist.  It  was  natural  that  inspiration  should 
gradually  become  restricted,  as  a  term,  to  this 
particular  operation  of  emotion  by  virtue 
of  which  it  realizes  for  the  mind  the  principle 
of  harmony,  whether  under  the  form  of  rea- 
son, —  that  is,  of  truth,  —  or  under  those 
forms  of  the  senses  which  we  call  the  arts. 
Inspiration,  then,  is,  in  this  view,  emotion 
vivifying  and  giving  clearness  and  speed  to 
the  intellect,  out  of  whose  store  of  memory 
and  imagination  it  creates  that  dream  in 
which  it  immortalizes  its  moment.  Emotion 
flooding  the  higher  soul  of  man,  and  not 
merely  his  physical  part,  —  flooding  the 
rational  soul,  and  there  creatively  productive 
according  to  the  harmonic  laws  of  that  realm, 


218  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

—  that  is  the  power  of  Apollo,  that  is  inspira- 
tion in  the  artistic  sense. 

Wherein,  then,  is  the  madness  ?  for  it  is 
agreed  that  th  man  so  affected  is  out  of 
his  senses  and  not  his  own  master;  he  is  an 
instrument,  a  voice,  not  personal  but  oracular; 
a  passive  master,  as  Emerson  says,  who  has 
lent  his  body  and  soul  to  the  god.  Is  it, 
then,  indeed,  so  strange?  or  is  not  this  a 
thing  familiar  to  us  all  in  our  daily  lives? 
Do  we  not  all  have  such  moments,  so  charged 
with  emotion  that  we  seem  taken  out  of 
ourselves,  so  filled  with  intensity  of  life  that 
we  seem  unconscious,  —  moments  when  new 
truths  come  with  a  physical  flash  on  the 
eye,  when  perceptions  of  beauty  illuminate 
the  soul  with  sudden  and  ample  glory,  when 
motions  of  love  expand  the  spirit  and  pour 
it  abroad,  —  and  then  comes  darkness,  and 
we  fail  from  out  the  mood;  but  yet  do  not 
altogether  fail,  for  the  memory  of  the  truth 
stays  with  us,  that  beauty  has  illuminated 
all  our  days,  those  motions  of  love  have 
expanded  the  heart  forever;  it  is  on  the 
memory  of  such  moments  that  we  live. 
You    remember    that    Gray    found    these 


INSPIRATION  219 

moments,  in  their  most  intense,  revealing  and 
exalted  power,  in  the  times  of  bereavement; 
and  I  suppose  that  is  the  commonest  ex- 
perience of  humanity.  But  in  any  part  of 
experience  they  may  arise,  in  its  gloom  or 
in  its  brightness;  and  when  they  arise  is 
it  not  true,  especially  if  the  experience  be 
prolonged  or  recurrent,  that  we  seem  to 
ourselves  not  entirely  our  own  masters  and 
to  others  somewhat  out  of  our  senses? 

The  difference  that  makes  the  poet  lies  in 
the  fact  that  by  some  peculiarity  of  organiza- 
tion he  stamps  an  image  of  his  soul  at  such 
moments  in  a  work  of  art,  and  what  is  for  us 
a  thing  of  the  private  life  becomes  through 
genius  a  thing  of  the  public  good.  He,  too, 
fails  from  out  the  mood,  but  this  work  of  his 
remains;  he  feels  in  the  same  way  as  we  the 
mystery  of  the  experience;  he  cannot  repeat 
it;  he  cannot  summon  the  inspiration  at  will; 
he  can  only  observe  its  times  and  seasons, 
and  be  in  a  state  of  preparedness  for  the  god, 
— to  use  the  religious  phrase, — for  inspiration 
has  its  conditions,  like  all  mortal  things, 
and  these  are  subject  to  knowledge.  If  you 
will  read  Emerson's  essay  on  Inspiration,  you 


220  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

will  find  that  he  employs  nearly  the  whole  of 
it  in  laying  down  these  conditions;  yet  they 
might,  IJ  think,  all  be  present,  and  the  inspi- 
ration not  occur. 

Now,  if  you  will  apply  what  is  true  of  our 
own  lives  to  the  life  of  the  race  in  time, 
you  will  have  a  fair  image  of  the  relation  of 
literature  to  civilization.  The  great  poets, 
the  great  ages  of  poetry,  are  such  selected 
and  fortunate  moments  of  the  life  of  the  race 
when  the  power  of  emotion  was  roused  and 
released,  and  especially  released  in  those 
harmonic  forms  of  the  rational  soul,  poetry, 
art,  truth,  which  are  all  essentially  forms  of 
the  reason ;  in  these  men  the  flowering  of  the 
soul  takes  place  in  time.  The  race  lives 
long  upon  the  memory  of  them,  measures  its 
own  capacity  by  them,  and  believes  that 
in  them,  if  anywhere,  it  touches  the  divine 
pulses  of  the  world.  Poetic  madness  is  thus 
no  more  than  the  common  emotional  experi- 
ence of  men  in  a  form  of  higher  intensity, 
and  specially  characterized  by  the  trait  that  it 
leaves  an  artistic  product  in  which  the  emo- 
tion is  permanently  recorded.  Furthermore, 
it  should  be  observed  that  men  of  genius  oc- 


INSPIRATION  221 


cupy  very  often  a  position  analogous  to  the 
primitive  madman  who  does  not  conform  his 
behavior  to  the  ways  of  the  tribe;  the  poet  is 
by  his  nature  somewhat  lawless,  especially 
when  under  the  control  of  his  genius;    and 
he  is  often  regarded,  therefore,  as  dangerous, 
diabolical,  denounced  as  an  atheist  and  sent 
off  into  the  desert,  disowned  and  defamed; 
in  other  words,  being  the  announcer  of  new 
moods  and  new  truths,  he  is  distrusted  by 
men  of  the  past  and  society  as  already  or- 
ganized in  belief  and  practice;  genius,  in  fact, 
is  the  principle  of  variation  in  society,  it  is 
the  element  in  which  the  new  comes  to  birth ; 
and  to  the  old  the  new  always  seems  a  madness 
because  it  is  in  contradiction  with  that  past 
experience  which  is   the   test  of  sanity  for 
the  bulk  of  men.     Poetic  madness,  then,  is 
characterized  not  only  by  the  fact  that  it 
leaves  an  artistic  product,  but  also  by  the 
fact  that  this  product  is  a  new  birth  in  the 
world. 

Let  us  consider  now,  in  the  light  of  these 
conceptions,  that  course  of  changes  in  the  be- 
liefs and  moods  of  men  that  we  commonly  de- 
nominate progress,  of  which  great  literatures 


222  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

are  the  record.  You  will  remember  that  I 
spoke  of  great  literatures  as  being  in  the 
landscape  of  the  mind  like  mountain  ranges 
that  mark  the  emotional  upheavals  of  the 
race;  and  I  have  just  spoken  of  them  again  as 
being  the  places  where  the  race  believes  that 
it  touches  the  divine  pulses  of  the  world. 
It  is  convenient  to  recur  to  the  conception 
of  Lucretius  as  he  expresses  it  in  the  great 
invocation  with  which  be  begins  his  poem; 
he  addresses  the  energy  of  nature  and  prays 
that  this  power  which  brings  forth  the  spring- 
time will  inspire  his  mind;  inspiration,  for 
him,  is  this  breathing  and  awakening  power 
in  his  mind,  which  is  one  with  all  power.  He 
conceived  of  man  as  evolved  out  of  nature 
without  any  divine  intelligence  in  the  process; 
the  eye  was  not  made  to  see  nor  the  ear  to 
hear,  but  these  senses  had  arisen  under  the 
conditions  existing  and  had  become  what 
they  could;  that  was  his  theory.  Man  is 
born  in  the  world  of  nature,  and  I  suppose  we 
shall  all  agree  that  man's  life  in  nature  as  he 
rose  through  stages  of  animal  and  primitive 
life  was  a  hard  struggle;  nature  was  not 
altogether  his  friend,  and  civilization  slowly 


INSPIRATION  223 

won  seems  to  have  been  won  somewhat  in 
spite  of  nature,  and  nature  is  still  very 
indifferent  to  man  and  his  fortunes;  man 
exists  by  making  what  use  he  can  of  the 
foothold  he  has  won  in  the  world  of  natural 
law.  Man  is  also  born  into  a  psychical  world ; 
that  is,  as  his  body  is  subject  to  natural  law, 
his  mind  is  subject  to  another  sphere  of  law, 
the  law  of  mind.  Man's  faculties  have  un- 
folded, we  may  suppose,  in  the  same  way  as 
his  senses,  under  the  conditions  of  the  case; 
they  were  not  created  but  have  evolved.  Nor 
is  there  any  reason  to  believe,  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  that  the  world  of  mind  is  any  more 
friendly  to  man  than  the  world  of  nature  has 
shown  itself  to  be.  Certainly  the  race  began 
by  being  merged  in  profound  ignorance, 
and  in  its  first  steps  it  was  plunged  in  univer- 
sal error,  especially  in  respect  to  what  we 
call  higher  truth.  It  was  long  before  the 
errors  of  the  senses  —  as  for  example  that 
the  sun  moves  round  the  earth  —  were 
corrected.  In  the  field  of  religion  the  first 
essays  of  the  race  were  universally  what  we 
now  call  savage  superstition,  a  realm  of 
magic  and  senseless  formulas,  of  the  worship 


224  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

of  stones  and  animals,  and  it  was  long  before 
the  conception  of  immortality  itself  was  other 
than  a  gloom  or  a  curse ;  the'way  upward  from 
the  ideas  and  moods  of  primitive  man  to  such 
ideas  and  moods  as  prevail  in  that  small 
section  of  mankind  which  is  called  enlightened 
was  as  hard  a  way  as  the  way  of  material 
civilization  in  nature  has  been.  Man  has 
always  been  in  peril,  and  has  often  suffered. 
Emotion  is  one  great  part  of  psychical  life; 
but  it  is  plain  that  the  history  of  emotion  has 
been  as  much  a  record  of  disaster  as  the 
history  of  reason  has  been  a  record  of  error. 
If  you  read  the  history  of  religion  and  attend 
to  the  kind  and  quality  and  issue  of  emotion 
toward  the  divine,  what  an  extraordinary 
chapter  it  is  of  folly  and  pain  and  evil! 
It  is  only  slowly  that  emotion  found  out 
the  useful  and  guiding  ways,  the  illuminating, 
the  humanizing  ways  of  its  life;  just  as 
slowly  reason  found  out  its  true  methods  in 
thought. 

Poetry,  at  its  birth,  marks  the  point  of 
victory  in  this  career,  in  this  experimenta- 
tion of  emotional  energy;  thereafter  it  gave 
the   scale   of   value   to   emotion.     Emotion 


INSPIRATION  225 

had  value  in  proportion  as  it  became  such 
inspiration  as  Lucretius  prayed  for,  and 
passed  into  the  intellect  and  was  there  dis- 
charged in  poetry,  or  music,  or  sculpture,  or 
other  forms  of  art,  and,  in  the  scientific 
realm,  of  truth;  there  it  evoked  and  bodied 
forth  that  principle  of  harmony  which  seems 
to  be  the  main  fact  of  the  psychical  world, 
the  world  of  the  perceptions,  the  world  of 
mind.  The  function  of  poetry  is  to  qualify 
the  emotional  life  of  the  race  as  the  function 
of  science  is  to  qualify  its  rational  life. 
The  test  of  emotion  is  its  capacity  to  pro- 
duce poetry,  as  the  test  of  reason  is  its  capa- 
city to  produce  science.  The  wasteful  and 
destructive  emotion,  the  intoxication  and 
raving,  the  physical  exhaustion  and  death 
of  Dionysus  is  laid  off  and  avoided;  the 
creative  emotion  issuing  in  harmonies  of  the 
mind  which  we  call  the  life  of  the  spirit,  — 
this,  the  inspiration  of  Apollo,  is  preferred. 
The  soul  has  a  sure  instinct  in  these  matters; 
as  a  rule,  it  forgets  the  past  rapidly  and  gladly, 
but  it  holds  in  its  memory  and  clings  in- 
vincibly to  the  great  ages  in  which  this  har- 
mony was  most  given  out,  —  to  poetry  which 

Q 


226  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

is  the  most  immortal  of  human  works,  to  art 
in  all  its  culminating  periods,  to  Greece  as 
the  most  fruitful  mother  of  both  beauty 
and  intellect  under  the  guardianship  of  the 
Delphic  inspiration. 

The  mood  of  the  world  changes.  Race 
differs  from  race,  and  age  from  age,  in  mood 
as  well  as  in  ideas.  Each  race  and  age  creates 
its  own  poetry,  according  to  its  place  in 
civilization  and  the  power  of  its  life.  I  was 
much  struck  by  the  mood  of  the  Mahometan 
religion,  —  by  its  sincerity,  its  dignity,  and 
the  fitness  of  the  mood  to  the  nature  of  the 
people.  The  bare  and  quiet  mosques  seemed 
to  me  a  fitter  place  for  the  presence  of  the 
living  god  of  the  desert,  the  god  of  boundless 
nature,  than  any  Christian  cathedral  lever 
entered.  In  a  Christian  church  I  am  apt 
to  feel  something  of  the  confinement  of  a 
tomb,  the  air  of  one;  the  service  seems  a 
watch  for  the  resurrection.  Not  only  does 
race  differ  from  race,  but  man  from  man  in 
the  mood  of  life;  the  test  of  the  mood,  of  its 
value  in  the  scale  of  worth,  is  its  power  to  give 
out  the  noble  dream,  body  forth  a  poetic  form 
for  itself,  or  if  not  to  create  one  freshly,  to 


INSPIRATION  227 

find  one  among  those  offered  by  the  poets, 
musicians,  artists,  and  prophets  of  the  world. 
The  service  of  the  poets  is  to  provide  such 
forms  of  feeling  for  mankind.  The  variety 
of  such  forms  now  in  the  world  is  great  in 
every  field  of  life,  in  the  Bibles  of  the  race, 
in  the  battle  songs  of  nations,  in  the  love  and 
death  songs  and  the  faith  songs  of  many 
ages.  The  range  of  value  in  these  is  from 
the  lowest  to  the  highest;  they  are  higher 
in  proportion  as  they  contain  a  more  perfect 
beauty,  a  more  pure  truth,  a  more  simple 
harmony  of  many  elements. 

Is  the  inspiration,  then,  divine,  and  do  all 
these  forms  proceed  from  one  infinite  power 
that  prompts  them?  Many  a  poet  and  many 
a  prophet  has  so  affirmed  it  of  his  own  work, 
—  but  when  Mahomet  says  that  he  has 
talked  with  God,  there  is  a  grave  shaking  of 
heads.  It  would  seem  that  Jehovah  hardly 
escaped  the  curse  he  visited  upon  Babel,  but 
has  himself  spoken  to  the  nations  in  many 
tongues.  It  is  not  necessary  to  be  too  well 
assured.  The  name  of  the  god  adds  nothing 
to  the  truth  of  the  doctrine.  The  god  of 
poetry  is  certainly,  as  Tennyson  says,  the 


228  THE  INSPIRATION  OF   POETRY 

nameless  one;  the  source  of  inspiration  is 
no  more  known  than  the  source  of  the  other 
moods  by  which  our  being  is  sustained.  It 
belongs  to  our  sense  of  the  infinite  in  which 
man  feels  he  vaguely  shares,  that  the  inspira- 
tion is  inexhaustible,  and  continually  puts 
forth  a  new  form.  The  diversity  of  these 
forms,  viewed  in  their  length  and  compass 
from  the  beginning  and  through  the  world,  is 
one  miracle ;  the  second  and  greater  miracle  is 
that  there  is  forever,  age  after  age,  an  ever 
new  birth  of  the  hitherto  unknown  and  un- 
expected. The  mood  of  the  world  is  for- 
ever renewed.  The  poets  contain  this  ele- 
ment of  promise;  in  them  is  the  thing  that 
shall  be;  they  are  the  wings  on  which  the 
new  sphere  swims  into  our  ken.  The  in- 
finite energy,  of  which  Lucretius  sang,  has 
thus  its  times  of  putting  forth  in  the  race, 
its  springtides  of  fresh  abundance,  its  blos- 
soming from  age  to  age,  from  race  to  race; 
there  is  no  finality  in  any  of  its  blossoms ;  but 
it  never  ceases  to  put  forth  another  and 
another  strange  and  unknown  flower. 

I  have  spoken  to  but  little  purpose  if  I 
have  not  already  made  it  plain  that  the  poetic 


INSPIRATION  229 

energy,  the  emotion  and  the  dream,  the 
madness,  is  common  to  men  and  belongs  to 
the  soul  by  its  own  nature.  The  poetic  life 
is  not  the  privilege  of  some,  but  the  path  of 
all,  and  the  passion  and  the  power  to  lead  it 
is  the  measure  of  every  man's  soul.  Men 
may  be  great  in  other  ways,  great  in  trade 
and  politics  and  war;  but  they  are  great  in 
soul  in  proportion  as  they  are  poets.  Just 
as  in  the  original  dancing  horde  all  were 
poets,  so  is  it  still;  there  may  be  one  among 
them  who  leads  the  dance,  but  all  may  join 
hands  and  voices  and  follow  on  in  unison. 
The  poetic  impulse  is  universal;  from  the 
emotional  urgency  of  life  itself  no  one  can 
escape,  but  he  may  avail  himself  of  it  only 
for  the  drunkenness  of  the  senses,  for  the 
raving  physical  waste  of  the  untaught,  un- 
bridled madness;  but  the  man  must  have, 
besides  the  power  of  emotion  which  nature 
pours  into  him,  the  wise  use  of  this  power; 
and  if  he  have  wisdom  in  his  soul,  he  will  strive 
to  be  inducted  rather  into  the  choir  of  Apollo, 
and  behold  and  share  in  those  forms  of  beauty 
and  truth  in  which  the  harmony  of  the  world 
is  seen,  for  these  forms  of  beauty  and  truth, 


230  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

revealed  in  poetry  and  shaped  in  art,  are  the 
intellectual  children  of  emotion.  In  their 
company  and  gazing  upon  them  and  habit- 
uating his  eyes  to  their  presence,  he  will 
form  his  own  soul  after  their  pattern;  for 
these  works  are  so  intimately  bound  with  the 
emotion  out  of  which  they  sprang  into  being, 
they  are  so  instinct  with  its  immortal  vigor, 
that  they  generate  the  same  emotion  in  the 
beholder  according  as  he  has  power  to  receive 
it  and  take  its  form  in  his  own  soul;  it  is 
thus  that  the  poets  are  the  guardians  of  the 
soul.  Their  office  is  to  nourish  the  poet  that 
is  in  each  one  of  us,  and  to  free  the  poetic  en- 
ergy in  our  bosoms  in  noble  forms  of  our  own 
private  life ;  for  by  commerce  with  the  poets 
the  creative  energy  steals  into  the  breast, 
and  there  builds  with  original  force  in  the 
life  that  is  most  inviolably  our  own  and  un- 
shared by  and  unknown  to  the  world.  The 
great  part  of  mankind  lead  this  life  mostly 
under  the  phases  of  religion,  whose  emotional 
modes  are  fixed  in  forms  of  dignity,  beauty 
and  power  sanctioned  by  long  use;  but  in 
other  fields  the  poetic  life  is  neglected. 
I  am  the  more  struck,  I  think,  as  I  grow 


INSPIRATION  231 

older,  with  the  sense  of  how  small  a  part  of 
mankind,  and  how  few  persons  in  any  gen- 
eration, really  possess  the  higher  fruits  of 
civilization;  and  consequently  how  frail  is 
man's  hold  even  on  the  good  which  he  has  so 
hardly  won.  It  is  not  only  liberty  which 
can  be  quickly  lost,  but  every  supreme 
blessing.  How  intermittent  and  brief  the 
life  of  the  arts  has  been ;  how  rare  is  a  poetic 
age  and  how  soon  extinct,  if  one  looks  at  the 
general  history  of  the  world!  We  are  for- 
tunate in  the  time  of  our  birth,  in  our  in- 
herited poetry,  and  in  the  flourishing  of  reason 
among  us ;  the  opportunity  for  the  poetic  life 
is  put  into  our  hands;  all  of  us,  if  we  will, 
can  acquire  that  wise  use  of  emotion  which 
I  have  tried  to  emphasize.  For  like  all 
power,  emotion  is  a  thing  of  danger;  in  the 
hands  of  the  foolish  it  often  destroys  them; 
and  the  wisest  cannot  better  secure  himself 
than  by  developing  his  emotions  through  the 
poets  and  their  kindred.  He  will,  so  doing, 
find  that  emotion  is  the  servant  of  the  highest 
reason;  for  that  principle  of  harmony  which 
emotion  gives  out  and  unveils  in  its  finite 
forms  is  the  element  that  reason  takes  note  of 


232  THE   INSPIRATION  OF  POETRY 

as  the  eye  takes  note  of  light.  The  true  oppo- 
sition is  between  the  infinite  and  the  finite. 
Emotion  lies  in  the  sphere  of  the  infinite; 
the  infinite  is  inexhaustible,  and  hence  there 
is  no  finality  in  the  works  of  genius  or  in  our 
own  lives,  as  poets  and  artists  are  the  first  to 
confess,  for  they  have  no  sooner  finished  their 
work  than  they  are  discontented  with  it  and 
throw  it  aside.  You  will  never  seize  the  poet 
in  his  poem,  for  he  has  already  left  it;  and 
the  poem  is  only  the  prophet's  garment  that 
he  leaves  behind  him  in  your  hands.  In- 
spiration resides  in  the  infinite,  in  emotion. 
Reason,  even  the  creative  reason,  is  of  the 
finite,  the  measured,  the  known;  its  works  are 
renewed  from  the  great  deep,  the  throbbing 
of  life  itself,  inexhaustibly;  and  hence  after 
each  of  the  great  and  glorious  toils  of  genius, 
each  emanation  of  the  dream,  whether  indi- 
vidual or  the  labor  of  a  race,  when  the  last 
stroke  is  struck,  the  last  word  said,  and  the 
light  begins  to  die  off,  —  then  emotion,  which 
is  of  the  infinite,  again  supervenes,  still  brood- 
ing in  itself  some  new  world,  some  new  gospel 
of  gladder  tidings  of  greater  joy. 


By   George   E.   Woodberry 
POEMS 

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"  It  is  impossible  to  open  the  volume  anywhere  at  random, 
without  at  once  observing  as  its  prime  characteristics  a  purity 
of  line,  a  sweetness  of  melody,  a  fineness  of  sentiment,  not  to 
be  found  present  in  such  perfect  and  unbroken  harmony  in 
the  work  of  any  other  among  contemporary  poets."  —  Atlantic 
Monthly. 

HEART    OF    MAN 

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Here  the  author  illustrates  how  "  poetry,  politics,  and  religion 
are  the  flowers  of  the  same  human  spirit,  and  have  their  feed- 
ing roots  in  a  common  soil  deep  in  the  general  heart  of  man." 

"  Books  like  this  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  are  not  common.  It  is 
not  alone  that  he  has  a  polished  style,  a  rich  culture,  original- 
ity of  thought  and  diction;  it  is  a  certain  nobility  of  feeling 
and  utterance  which  distinguishes  '  Heart  of  Man '  from  the 
ruck  of  essays  on  literature  or  philosophical  subjects.  Those 
who  are  familiar  with  Mr.  Woodberry's  poetry  will  know  at 
once  what  we  mean.  .  .  .  Those  who  care  for  really  good 
reading  will  not  pass  this  book  by."  —  Providence  Journal. 

MAKERS   OF    LITERATURE 

Being  Essays  on  Shelley,  Landor,  Browning,  Byron,  Arnold, 
Coleridge,  Lowell,  Whittier,  and  others. 

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